Edgar Allan Poe’s 200th Birthday
By Choi Yearn-hong
This year, many American people are celebrating Abraham Lincoln, because 2009 is the bicentennial year of his birth in a log cabin in Kentucky. Many American people are also celebrating Edgar Allan Poe this year, because he was also born in 1809.
Poe also deserves a big celebration, especially from the literary world, because his influences on American and world literature have been enormous. Poe died mysteriously at age 40.
One Baltimore professional football team was named after his poem, ``The Ravens,'' and one tavern after another poem, ``Annabel Lee,'' his last. The two poems are famous among all high school students in the United States.
In this column, I would like to introduce Poe to the readers of The Korea Times and to Korean poets and writers who are interested in propagating Korean literature to the world market.
They should know as much about American literature as possible if they want to propagate their literature to the United States and the world. Poets and writers can be cosmopolitan beyond their national borders.
Frogs in a pond cannot be poets and writers. What makes them great is their cross-national stories based on humanity.
Who was Edgar Allan Poe?
Legend portrays him as a drunk and a drug addict who died in a Baltimore gutter. Tales say he was unlucky in love, undisciplined at studies and unhappy in life. Readers see in his disturbing stories of murder, madness and revenge the fruits of the author's miserable existence.
The dark vision seems to fit perfectly this 19th-century master of horror and detective fiction. And yet this view is neither complete nor totally accurate.
I came to know of him from my first visit to the University of Virginia in the 1970s when I was teaching at Old Dominion University. My colleague from Virginia invited me to his alma mater one autumn day.
The University of Virginia was known as Thomas Jefferson's university, because Jefferson designed and built it after his retirement from the White House. Charlottesville was and is still known as ``Jefferson Town.''
His home, Monticello, attracts many tourists from inside and outside the United States, as does his university.
He was a brilliant architect. He designed and built his home and his university. I went to the Rotunda, the historical building at the institution.
As plans for the University of Virginia began to take shape in Jefferson's imagination, he envisioned a lawn surrounded on three sides by housing for students and professors, connected by covered walkways. The arrangement, he wrote, would form ``an academic village, instead of a large and common den of noise, of filth, and of fetid air.''
I saw one room Poe once occupied and another where Woodrow Wilson lived. The Poe room was empty, but the Wilson room was occupied. Only select outstanding students have the privilege of using the old students' quarters.
The professors' houses were two-story buildings with a small garden. The lawn was the common property among the university members ― the students, professors, and administrators. It was a nice academic village that I had never seen, nor have seen since in any other place.
Dick Harman, my colleague, wanted to show me the Poe and Wilson rooms. ``Yearn, the poet is still well respected over the president. Woodrow Wilson is one of most respectable presidents in this country, but Poe is more respected, as you see!'' It was an amazing finding to me.
I was shocked by the University of Virginia's decision that has kept the Poe room empty. It was a simple quarter with a fireplace, table, lamp and bed. His room has been preserved for a century as a memorial to the writer.
I could see Poe in that room in the early 19th century. Poe attended the university from February to December 1826. He left because his foster father would not provide the necessary funds. However, Poe has become ingrained in university lore. In 1904, the Raven Society was founded and took its name from Poe's famous poem.
The university is not the only place where Poe's legacy lingers. Experts recognize him as the inventor of the detective story, a master of psychological horror and a pioneer of science fiction. Some scholars also hail him as America's first great literary critic.
As a critic, he wielded an acid-tipped pen and easily made enemies. In his time, some saw him as a mix of substance and silliness. Poet James Russell Lowell described Poe as three-fifths genius and two-fifths sheer fudge.
Opinion on his achievements as a poet, however, remains highly contentious. Perhaps Poe's great achievement was his inspiration of other artists, including poet Charles Baudelaire, novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky, filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock and writer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
``Arguably, Poe is the most influential author from a global perspective,'' Prof. Jerome McGann, an English professor at the University of Virginia, says. ``His work has been translated into many media ― movies, television, plays and artwork. His cultural influence is enormous.''
Poe was a destitute poet and writer during his short life, despite the fact that he had great talent. His gravesite is in a churchyard in downtown Baltimore. Whenever I visit his gravesite, I see a half-bottle of cognac presented freshly with three roses on the anniversary of his death.
He passed away a long time ago, but many admirers still visit his place of rest and the little townhouse where he once lived not very far from there. He had an unlucky life, but his works have and will remain over time in many people's admiration and affection.
Life is short, but art is long. Isn't it?
I would like to suggest Korean people, and Korean poets and writers in particular, who are traveling to the Washington area to plan visiting the University of Virginia and Baltimore in order to feel Edgar Allan Poe, one of the most celebrated American writers in honor of his 200th birthday.
Dr. Choi is a poet and writer, currently in the Washington area. He can be reached at