Elizabeth Bishop and Her Art Book

Shall we descend into madness? Shall we be haunted by our own desires? Shall we be consumed by that terrible facet of life known only as death? Shall we cling to what cannot be reanimated? Shall we wish for a return of something that has long been in darkness?

Shall we become obliterated by the brutal finality of such a statement as "nevermore?"

Lenore has gone. She has departed from this life, and is permanently out of the reach of the man. The raven represents the solidarity of this. Despite how much he longs for the impossible, despite how much he hopes for something that could never occur, he still has that inclination that the fantastical could happen: he has to believe that she could come back. And the raven represents the voice of reason, the voice of actuality. And it kills him. It is pain, despair, melancholy and a spiritual death all rolled into one haunting feathery package.

He rebels against this voice of rationality. He knows the voice speaks the truth, but he cannot simply accept it. He has lost something vital; he has lost part of himself that will never grace his presence again. And he clings to hope, a false hope such as it is. The raven smashes this to oblivion; it destroys any last semblance of the miraculous occurring. It makes the man realise that this is life, not some whimsical world where nothing bad ever happens. People die. People we love die. Nothing can change that. Lenore will never walk through his chamber door again, and the reality drives him into madness. It shatters his life.

"And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming,
And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted- nevermore!"



His soul will never lift anymore; hope shall never be lifted anymore. By the end of the poem he has full realised the reality of the situation. The raven, the dark bird of harsh truth, the harbinger of the words he simply doesn't want to hear, has become demonised. It has become the very object he did not want to face; he created a sense of longing to protect himself from the emotional loss of Lenore, and this bubble of falsehood has been burst. Reality sets in, and it is a fate worse than death. It is one of persecution and mental chaos as the bird is simply unable to supply the man with all his answers. He is driven mad by the unknown.

The man in the poem has lost "Lenore." But, what is this Lenore? Is she a woman? Is she this man's lost love? Or is she something much, much, more? I think on the surface level of the poem she is his dead wife. But the archaic references speak of something else. Lenore could perhaps be a universal suggestion of a lost sense of self or even humanity. We are no longer what we once were. It is also rather significant that the man is persecuted only by the natural world. Very much in the Romanticism vein, man stands aside from nature. He has become something different with his modernisation and industrialisation.

He walks outside his nature. And Poe, being an anti-transcendentalism thinker (a dark romantic), demonstrates that life isn't all sunshine and roses, and nor could it ever be. It is pessimism in full force, and although I strongly disagree with the outlook on life, and appreciate the idealistic utopia offered in the poetry of Percy Shelley and other Romantics much more, I do love the dark beauty of this poem. The finality of the phrase "nevermore" is nothing short of maddening reality for our lost man. It is the end of hope.

This is quite easily one of Poe's finest works, and I highly recommend listening to this version of the poem: (It's narrated by Christopher Lee!)