[HN Gopher] Edgar Allan Poe's life was a mess. But his work was ...
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Edgar Allan Poe's life was a mess. But his work was in his command
Author : apollinaire
Score : 128 points
Date : 2025-03-14 19:12 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.washingtonpost.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.washingtonpost.com)
| barbazoo wrote:
| https://archive.ph/GHV3i
| porkbrain wrote:
| He was also into cryptography:
| https://www.cs.trincoll.edu/~crypto/historical/poe.html
| fixprix wrote:
| He also had a theory pretty close to the big bang in Eureka. It
| offended a lot of people at the time
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eureka:_A_Prose_Poem
| robin_reala wrote:
| I produced CC0 ebook compilations of Poe's short fiction and
| poetry for Standard Ebooks if anyone is interested in diving
| deeper into his writing: https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/edgar-
| allan-poe
|
| (I'd also recommend Leonid Andreyev's short fiction; he's often
| referred to as Russia's Poe:
| https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/leonid-andreyev/short-fict... )
| glimshe wrote:
| Very cool. Are the cover images made with AI or classic
| paintings?
| robin_reala wrote:
| Classic paintings: everything used on Standard Ebooks
| productions is old enough to be in the US public domain. The
| artists are in the colophons if you want to find out more.
| card_zero wrote:
| Odilon Redon, _Melancholy,_ and Robert Delaunay, _Saint-
| Severin No. 3._
|
| https://www.artic.edu/collection?q=Redon - I see he also
| made a series of prints, "To Edgar Poe"!
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Delaunay
|
| ...and some seascape with a ship in it, wasn 't fussed
| about that one.
| robin_reala wrote:
| I do love Odilon Redon, there was an excellent exhibition
| of his work in Copenhagen a few years ago that I managed
| to catch: https://www.glyptoteket.com/exhibition/odilon-
| redon-into-the... . Unfortunately etchings aren't house
| style for covers, we typically go for oil or watercolour-
| indistinguishable-from-oil.
| defrost wrote:
| Nice work, thanks to you and your fellow editors.
|
| Is there a back story to the _Gormenghast_ collection not
| being available:
| https://standardebooks.org/collections/gormenghast
|
| The comment given was: This book was
| published in 1946, and will therefore enter the U.S. public
| domain in 17 years on January 1, 2042.
|
| however it seemed odd that _apparently_ the work was done
| to prep it and notice appears elsewhere * that material
| offered is in the public domain .. and then this.
|
| No great drama, it just caught my attention, I like the
| series and wanted to check the art and the copy against
| what I have here in book form.
|
| * https://standardebooks.org/about/standard-ebooks-and-the-
| pub...
| acabal wrote:
| Some placeholders like this one exist because they are
| part of other collections for which we have more items.
| So when the reader is viewing the other collection, they
| can see which items we have and which we don't.
| spike021 wrote:
| thanks for your work! i was just thinking the other day it had
| been a while (since university days) since i read his work and
| i happen to be taking a long-haul flight this week, so need
| something to read.
| janetmissed wrote:
| tysm for contributing to standard ebooks, one of my favorite
| things on the whole internet
| the_florist wrote:
| Many thanks to each of you editors for the sterling work!
|
| I was recently inspired to embark on a project to mirror the
| Standard Ebooks library, starting with a book that you
| produced, which happens to be my favorite:
|
| https://flowery.app/books/edgar-allan-poe/short-fiction
|
| Once the business achieves ramen profitability, the next
| milestone will be to give back with a corporate sponsorship.
| robin_reala wrote:
| Looks good! One minor point: it looks like some of your
| conversion isn't keeping accurate styling. For example, if
| you look at the letter in
| https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/edgar-allan-poe/short-
| fict... that starts with "In conformity with an order" you'll
| see (in Firefox and Chrome, Safari's in the process of adding
| the styling) that the address is 90o as per the original
| scans. The same in https://flowery.app/books/edgar-allan-
| poe/short-fiction/thou... falls back to normal display, which
| is fine but perhaps a little bit of a shame.
| the_florist wrote:
| Good catch! I am still fleshing out the EPUB parser, so
| loading of CSS and images (other than the SE logo) is not
| yet supported. I hard-coded the styling for now, which
| works well enough thanks to the books' consistent markup.
|
| I also overlooked the diary styling of "Mellonta Tauta."
| timonofathens wrote:
| If you prefer a physical book, I can recommend:
| http://www.everymanslibrary.co.uk/classics-author.aspx?lette...
|
| (Not affiliated, I just really like Everyman's Library)
| codr7 wrote:
| Alternatively, his life was exactly what it had to be for him to
| do what he was supposed to.
| Mistletoe wrote:
| I wonder what he would choose if he knew? A comfortable long
| life and happiness or to be remembered forever?
| echelon wrote:
| "long life" is geologically just wishful thinking. We all
| have the same quality of life outcome when compared against
| the vastness of time.
|
| What is a billionaire's lavish life to the toil of an artist,
| inventor, or revolutionary? We all wind up rotting in the
| blink of an eye. Luxury, pleasure, and dopamine are as
| fleeting as youth.
|
| It's better to do something of note.
| card_zero wrote:
| If you lived twice as long, you could do two things of
| note. Twice as better.
| katzgrau wrote:
| Eh, I'll go ahead and trust that life is about as long as
| it needs to be. Any "things of note" apart from genuinely
| helping someone else out on their journey when you had a
| shot is totally irrelevant from the broader perspective.
| card_zero wrote:
| The part where "you have a shot" is crucially important.
| Otherwise, if all people do is help others to help
| others, you have a circular system where nothing is done.
| Exoristos wrote:
| If all everyone does is help others, you have a circular
| system where everything is done.
| ashoeafoot wrote:
| The candle that burns twice as bright only burns half as
| long.
| winwang wrote:
| Unless you make the candle out of better materials.
| muzani wrote:
| A lot of masterpieces are done by 30, whether it's
| founding FAANG, the theory of relativity, Bohemian
| Rhapsody, etc. I've always found it interesting that
| these people do so much with so few resources, then when
| people like Einstein had the freedom to do what they
| like, they couldn't outdo what they did in their earlier
| years. You'd think that with more experience, money, and
| connections, they'd be besting themselves again and
| again.
| jama211 wrote:
| This sounds like some serious copium, we don't live in the
| vastness of time, we live now. Not to mention that I can
| assure you in the vastness of time his work will also be
| forgotten in an almost as small a "blink of the eye" in
| geological time.
|
| You could just as easily say "we'll all end up rotting in
| the blink of an eye, so better to be happy and enjoy it
| than waste your time trying pointlessly to do something of
| note that will be forgotten".
| echelon wrote:
| Your enjoyment is a machine responding to neural stimuli
| that evolved to follow gradients in order to propagate
| genes. This enjoyment is infinitesimal no matter how much
| you generate in your short lifespan. None of it will be
| enjoyed when you perish. Even more damning: the pleasure
| you had ten minutes ago cannot be enjoyed now. Sex, fine
| meals, belongings from years ago can't bring you
| anything. It's just ephemeral chemical flux. Saturating
| those pathways is malinvestment into entropy.
|
| Thought and actions have much more meaning to time than
| our tiny, worthless genes. Or the neurotransmitters
| dancing in our brains. Or the decaying weights that hold
| thoughts just briefly. Brains carry a simulation of the
| world for a short time. They cannot be shared or
| replicated or extended. Their pleasure has no value to
| anyone but yourself, and like the hedonic treadmill on
| which they run, it doesn't provide enduring value. Just
| an endless appetite that calls to be satiated. Thoughts
| and actions, however, pay civilizational dividends. They
| endure beyond our short lives and carry our world's
| evolution into the vast future.
|
| We're all already practically dead. It won't be long. The
| years tick by in the blink of an eye. Everyone you know
| is growing old. You can make your finite choices and
| optimize for a few good trips, and a sports car if you
| want, but that's all meaningless. When you get
| Alzheimer's you won't remember. When you get cancer,
| it'll bring you little comfort. And when you die, it'll
| all be annihilated.
|
| Accolades and remembrance and legacy don't matter either.
| Just your actions and how they shape the future live on.
|
| That isn't to say you should live an entirely ascetic
| lifestyle devoid of pleasure and friends and family. We
| need some comfort to maintain our happiness and sanity.
| But to make it life's sole purpose seems like the
| greatest waste in the majestic algorithm of the cosmos.
| We're each the universe alive for the blink of an eye,
| and to only pleasure and tickle ourselves is such a
| shallow thing to spend such an invaluable thing on.
|
| I know lots of folks that live for the next vacation or
| the next big purchase, and they're spending their careers
| writing plumbing or glue, or shuffling paper. That's
| something I can't wrap my head around. It's not cope.
| It's recognition of our place in time.
| wholinator2 wrote:
| Well okay. But what if you're impoverished and must work
| every day simply to make enough food to survive the
| winter. That's as much a life "for pleasure". It's not
| sportscars and caviar, but it's the same drive to
| acquire, accumulate, thrive, gain wealth (survival).
| These people are also working for the good of the
| civilization. How do you know that the big spender
| dedicating their time to redistributing wealth they
| generate isn't contributing anything? Surely civilization
| does not live on ideas alone. We can't all be depressed
| pontificators, and i for one believe there's nothing
| wrong with not wanting to live the ideas you're stating
| here. Sure, there are hard truths, but there's also ways
| to state them with beauty and not brutalism and disdain.
| untrust wrote:
| I agree with most of what you said, but to be frank:
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=j95kNwZw8YY
|
| Depending on your perspective, life can be amazing and
| full of wonders, or it could be drudgery where the only
| thing which makes you happy is a moment of respite.
| Someone could easily strawman your argument by saying
| that everything you do is worthless because we're
| infinitesimal beings on a tiny rock orbiting a star in a
| corner of the universe. The Sun is going to explode
| eventually, humans might destroy the planet no matter
| what you do, or an asteroid might take us all out like
| the dinosaurs, rendering your life of actions and
| purposeful existence useless in the end.
|
| All of this is to say, do what makes you happy and dont
| worry about others so much.
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| "long life" is quantically super dope. You get to live 10^8
| times longer than a meson so you have ample time to profit
| feom luxury, pleasure and dopamine.
|
| And you have time to avoid philosophical discussions that
| distract you from the above.
| doctorhandshake wrote:
| I don't remember where I read it but I heard David Lynch
| recounting a conversation with his doctor in which he asked
| if being prescribed antidepressants could interfere with his
| creativity. The doctor said he couldn't rule it out, so Lynch
| decided he'd rather deal with the symptoms of depression.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| On the other hand, Lynch also went on record saying that an
| artist doesn't need to suffer to produce great art. And
| that depression is the enemy of creativity.
|
| https://youtu.be/UljZmbgK_sI
| haswell wrote:
| Those aren't necessarily in conflict with each other,
| though.
|
| As an often-depressed creative person, I find that
| depression is absolutely the enemy of creativity, but my
| creativity is often fueled by the same things that cause
| my depression.
|
| Meeting my creative goals is often about managing the
| depression. But without the depression, my creative
| output would likely be very different.
| er4hn wrote:
| Taken further - Art can be created as a response to
| seeing or experiencing suffering, but it is important to
| manage your own response to suffering.
|
| In On Writing, Stephen King has this lovely quote about
| his journey to get off of drugs: "The idea that the
| creative endeavor and mind-altering substances are
| entwined is one of the great pop-intellectual myths of
| our time. ... Substance abusing writers are just
| substance abusers -- common garden variety drunks and
| druggies, in other words. Any claims that the drugs and
| alcohol are necessary to dull a finer sensibility are
| just the usual self-serving bullshit. I've heard
| alcoholic snowplow drivers make the same claim, that they
| drink to still the demons."
| sudoshred wrote:
| Lifestyle choices and an individual's work product should
| be acknowledged to be uncorrelated. The practical reality
| is never that simple but attributing your own success, or
| that of anyone else, to external factors does a
| disservice to the originator of the work and to society
| at large.
| Fricken wrote:
| Ken Kesey's "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" was a
| groundbreaking novel and wouldn't have been so if it
| weren't for LSD. Of Course, that was Kesey's first and
| only criticaly acclaimed novel and he has said later in
| life that too much acid screwed him up, I certainly
| wouldn't argue it's sustainable over a career. LSD also
| changed pop music in a pretty major way.
| zabzonk wrote:
| A lot of people liked "Sometimes A Great Notion". I
| personally prefer it to "Cuckoo". It doesn't read like
| something written by someone whacked out on acid.
| Gud wrote:
| David Lynch is not making a very convincing argument
| here.
|
| Just because Van Gogh was (presumably) happy while doing
| his painting, doesn't mean that the suffering previous
| wasn't an important component in portraying it in his
| art.
|
| One of my favourite novellas is Dostoyevskys White
| Nights, which portrays a young man in love.
|
| His portrayal is so vivid that I doubt it could have been
| written by anyone who hasn't experienced heartbreak.
| Mistletoe wrote:
| I just rewatched David Lynch: The Art Life last night on
| Max. It's so freaking good. If anyone reading this hasn't
| seen it, I really recommend it.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| I chatted with Christopher hitchens about a month before he
| was diagnosed with the cancer that took him out, and he was
| adamant that cigarettes and whisky were vital to his
| writing process. He said he could consider cutting out
| liquor, but the cigarettes had to stay if he was going to
| be productive at all.
| rendall wrote:
| > _Lynch decided he'd rather deal with the symptoms of
| depression_
|
| ... through meditation.
| triceratops wrote:
| He may not actually be remembered forever. It hasn't even
| been 150 years since he died.
|
| EDIT: He died in 1849 so it hasn't even been 200 years.
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| Although Edgar Allan Poe is well known, I think his influence is
| under appreciated. He pretty much invented the detective story
| genre with "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" and his "Eureka: A
| Prose Poem" was early sci-fi that more or less invented the idea
| of the Big Bang.
| keiferski wrote:
| I took a detective fiction course in college and _Rue Morgue_
| was indeed the first story we read.
| shortrounddev2 wrote:
| He was also the primary influence on HP Lovecraft
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| Absolutely. I think that's more well known though, he wrote
| that Poe was his "God of fiction". His influence on Sir
| Arthur Conan Doyle, Jules Verne and H G Wells is probably
| less well know. He was also a big influence on Alfred
| Hitchcock who wrote "It's because I liked Edgar Allan Poe's
| stories so much that I began to make suspense films".
| DevDesmond wrote:
| There is a Sci-Fi Noir TV show "Altered Carbon" (based on a
| book) featuring an AI using Edgar Allan Poe as their persona.
|
| That Edgar Allan Poe is seminal in both genres makes me
| appreciate an already amazing character that much more! I would
| 10/10 recommend anyone watch season one of the series.
|
| This thread now has me tempted to finally get into reading Poe
| himself, (among Lovecraft and the Altered Carbon books for more
| Poe influenced writing).
| defrost wrote:
| You might also enjoy _Flow Like Poe_ :
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8Z0VynTR84
| bmm6o wrote:
| What's interesting is that Poe is not in the Altered Carbon
| book. The hotel was called the Hendrix and its avatar was
| Jimi the guitarist. They couldn't get image rights for the
| film, so had to change it. But i agree that atmospherically
| and thematically Poe is a better fit.
| slowtrek wrote:
| Was just reading about Churchill's alcoholism in a bio and looks
| like Poe was right there with him on that front. My favorite Poe
| visual is the The Masque of the Red Death. Probably wrote it
| blasted out of his mind.
| TheAtomic wrote:
| Someone should summarize for Poe fans who don't support WaPo.
| gcheong wrote:
| Maybe just read the article through the archive link instead?
| sometimes_all wrote:
| I was introduced to Poe via "The Cask of Amontillado". After
| that, I binge-watched The Fall of the House of Usher when it
| released, which is a mash-up of a lot of Poe's stories (the show
| didn't have the subtlety of the original work, but was a lot of
| fun). Now I'm reading all his short stories.
|
| His work is really cool, and I wish I read him earlier.
| Loughla wrote:
| The cask was my introduction to him as well. Then straight into
| Arthur Gordon Pym. It is still my favorite book, forever.
| light_triad wrote:
| Here's a great reading of The Masque of the Red Death:
|
| https://youtu.be/FskFXD-SQpI?si=UYapck6_51LcAi9y
|
| The Simpsons did a famous rendition of The Raven read by James
| Earl Jones:
|
| https://youtu.be/ifhvfdqLLa8?si=xYL_XV5EDaT8RV9c
| moomin wrote:
| From Epic Rap Battles of History:
|
| Masque of the Red Death? Barely blood curdling.
|
| Pit and the Pendulum? Not even unnerving.
|
| Perving on your first cousin when she's thirteen years old? Now
| that's disturbing!
| bobsmooth wrote:
| It's important to remember that ERB is comedy and not actual
| history. Poe loved his cousin like a daughter.
| phoh wrote:
| "democracy dies in darkness"
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| Poe, insanity, and containing the feminine monstrous
| (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-020-0486-4), The Dollop
| ep.1 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueyw-pACTM8), ep.2
| (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGo53U2csMI)
|
| Hard to read his work now without thinking about how much of a
| douche he was
| lqet wrote:
| I was mildly interested in poetry as an adolescent, and
| "discovering" Poe in the English original (I was only aware of
| bad translations) had quite an impact on my young, impressionable
| brain. I still have large parts of "The Raven" and "Annabel Lee"
| memorized, 20 years later. After Poe, it was hard for me to take
| writers seriously who just inserted line breaks into prose texts
| and called it poetry.
| tetris11 wrote:
| > Through all his binges and bankruptcies, through every setback
| and depressive spell, he kept making art because he knew that's
| where the best of him lay.
|
| This hits really close to home.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| Many lives of talented poets and artists were a mess. Many died
| young. I still don't know whether living a life of misery leads
| to artistic mastery or not.
| muzani wrote:
| I feel like the main problem is it pays terribly. Most of the
| best ones were basically broke. But movie stars and pop stars
| are the opposite. They live in mansions and end up dying young
| anyway.
|
| Maybe great art just requires being deep in flow to the point
| you neglect everything around you.
| gabriel666smith wrote:
| I think that a vocation - artistic or otherwise - creates a
| place of safety in any kind of chaos. Life can be as bad as it
| is, but so long as you believe: "on the page, things are good",
| you can always go to work.
|
| I'm not sure if suffering leads to vocation, or if vocation
| induces neglect of the world that sits outside of that
| vocation, causing suffering.
|
| From my experience (certainly not Poe-tier) the causality is
| complicated - a cycle, probably starting with a little of both.
| simonebrunozzi wrote:
| https://archive.is/unrX4
| shreyshnaccount wrote:
| It's a good article, but the headline feels a bit off considering
| the source. The idea of personal responsibility has been co-opted
| by corporations in the past to deflect from systemic issues, so
| seeing it framed this way- especially given the ownership and
| agenda of WP- feels a little manipulative. Though, to be fair, I
| am almost certainly over-analyzing it.
| iaaan wrote:
| Not at all, I think it's certainly worth pointing out. Regular
| people (like the author of this article, presumably) often end
| up inadvertently parroting the agendas that have been instilled
| into them, consciously or not.
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