Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poewas an American writer, editor, and literary critic. Poe is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre. He is widely regarded as a central figure of Romanticism in the United States and American literature as a whole, and he was one of the country's earliest practitioners of the short story. Poe is generally considered the inventor of the detective fiction genre and is further credited with contributing to the...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth19 January 1809
CityBoston, MA
CountryUnited States of America
A wise man hears one word and understands two.
With me poetry has been not a purpose, but a passion; and the passions should be held in reverence: they must not they cannot at will be excited, with an eye to the paltry compensations, or the more paltry commendations, of mankind.
If you are ever drowned or hung, be sure and make a note of your sensations.
Imperceptibly the love of these discords grew upon me as my love of music grew stronger.
And all I loved, I loved alone.
It is more than probable that I am not understood; but I fear, indeed, that it is in no manner possible to convey to the mind of the merely general reader, an adequate idea of that nervous intensity of interest with which, in my case, the powers of meditation (not to speak technically) busied and buried themselves, in the contemplation of even the most ordinary objects of the universe.
From childhood's hour I have not been. As others were, I have not seen. As others saw, I could not awaken. My heart to joy at the same tone. And all I loved, I loved alone.
It is a happiness to wonder; -- it is a happiness to dream.
Sleep, those little slices of death — how I loathe them.
There are chords in the hearts of the most reckless which cannot be touched without emotion.
The realities of the world affected me as visions, and as visions only, while the wild ideas of the land of dreams became, in turn,—not the material of my every-day existence--but in very deed that existence utterly and solely in itself.
And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door, That I scarce was sure I heard you"— here I opened wide the door; — Darkness there, and nothing more.
In the tale proper--where there is no space for development of character or for great profusion and variety of incident--mere construction is, of course, far more imperatively demanded than in the novel.
For my own part, I have never had a thought which I could not set down in words, with even more distinctness than that with which I conceived it.