Meaning of Stanzas by Edgar Allan Poe?

Question

I need to do 2 projects on it due this week and pretty much have no idea what it means. Obviously something with nature but besides that im clueless. heres the poem http://classiclit.about.com/library/bl-etexts/eapoe/bl-eapoe-stanzas.htm

Answer 1

Wow. This poem is SO hard to read ... I guess you could tap into the immense on-line Poe scholarship -- and maybe your teacher figured you'd get help understanding the lines -- but boy, this thing is constantly impenetrable, isn't it?

Let's see ...

I’m going to call the speaker of the poem “Poe” – even though we all realize that it might be a dramatic persona that the poet is “wearing” for this poem. (In other words, we have to remember that the actual man Edgar Allen Poe may not have been a freaky and crazy as the speaker of this poem – but it’s more fun and less confusing to write “Poe” than to write “the speaker” a million billion times.)

Okay, here’s the deal. Poe was nuts, right? Maybe schizophrenic. Maybe manic depressive. Maybe an alcoholic/drug addict. Maybe an epileptic. Certainly neurotic. So choose your own diagnosis.

One thing that’s true is that he had these occasional INTENSE feelings of a MYSTERIOUS POWER in NATURE. (Again, this may have been a symptom or manifestation of his mental illness.) He spent a lot of his poetry – and his life – trying to understand what this weird POWER meant, what it was, how to be true to it.

In this poem, Poe attempts to describe this strange feeling that MOONLIGHT causes in him – and he tries to come up with a theory for why moonlight affects him so strongly. (One other thing – I’m going to use the word “divine” every once in a while –and when I use it means “holy” or “related to God.”)

Stanza 1: I HAD A FRIEND WHO LIKED SUNLIGHT.

When the speaker (Poe?) was younger, he knew someone who seemed to have a special sensitivity to natural forces – to the light from “the sun and the stars” – which I think Poe views as the “Heavenly” aspect of nature, the “light side.” The weird thing is that when this guy was all charged up on Nature, when his spirit was lit to a fever by the beauty of nature, he didn’t even realize that he was under the influence of the natural forces.

Stanza 2. BUT FOR ME, MOONLIGHT’S THE THING – AND IT’S POWERFUL – IT FEELS LIKE PURE GODTHOUGHT STREAMING THROUGH ME.

Poe muses that maybe (in a similar way as his friend) his spirit is totally influenced by MOONLIGHT (which he sees as the dark side). But if so, he kinda thinks that moonlight must be much more powerful than old mythology (“ancient lore”) suggests. (In other words, mythology tends to make the sun out to be a big deal – but sees the moon as kind of a minor god. Poe’s experience of being “ruled” by the moon makes him think that the moon is plenty powerful.)

Or maybe (he interrupts himself to say) maybe moonlight is actually some vast creatures actual THOUGHTS streaming over us, totally coating us like dew coats the summer grass at night. So what he feels is this god thought streaming over and through him.


Stanza 3: IS IT THE CONTACT WITH THE GODTHOUGHT THAT DRIVES ME TO TEARS? ARE THE TEARS THE SIGN OF MY SPIRIT WAKING UP TO THE DIVINE? BUT THERE’S NO REASON FOR THE SPIRIT TO SLEEP – THE DIVINE IS AROUND US EVERY DAY. BUT ALL THE SAME, I ONLY EXPERIENCE IT OCCASIONALLY – THAT WEIRD FEELING IS ACCOMPANIED BY A “BOING” SOUND

Okay – Stanza 3 is probably the hardest …

So, Poe wonders, if moonlight is this “godthought” flowing over us, is that why sometimes moonlight suddenly (for no clear reason) moves us to tears – even though our spirits have recently “slept in apathy.” In other words, even though up until recently we didn’t give a **** about all this godlike stuff flowing into the world around us.

BUT (Poe continues) “it need not be.” In other words, there’s no reason why our spirits have to fall asleep. The divine in the world might be hidden, but it’s ALSO all around us – flowing through us (for example) in the form of moonlight. Still, it turns out that we only very RARELY recognize it – when (for example) the moonlight hits us and we feel this sudden weird sense of tears. (Poe suggests that this feeling – this sudden heebie-jeebie feeling of waking up to the divine around us – is accompanied by a noise inside us – a type of “boing, “a strange sound, as of a harp-string broken, To awake us.”

Stanza 4: MAYBE THIS FEELING AND THE BOING IS A SPECIAL GIFT FROM GOD TO KEEP ARTISTS FROM GOING TO HELL.

This “boing” and this weird feeling that moves us to tears (he suggests) is a special gift from God to a special group of people – THE INCREDIBLY SENSITIVE who otherwise would be drawn by their INCREDIBLE PASSIONS to fall from God and Heaven. In other words, folks with an artistic temperament – those EXTREMELY SENSITIVE ARTSY BOHEMIAN TYPES are so dang attracted to sensation that they would probably be go to Helll for whoring and drinking and doing drugs and such not – except that they OCCASIONALLY have this weird, weepy feeling for the divine beauty of the cosmos. And this weird feeling (not firm religious conviction or strength of character) is what draws them to God. So the spirit of the artist ends up (maybe) “wearing its own deep feeling as a crown” – which is perhaps the only thing that will get these bastards into Heaven.

Answer 2

Edgar Allan Poe Analysis

Answer 3

Hey Steve, try this Best Answer if you have the guts to endure:

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20071024211447AAcBjrT

good luck

Answer 4

all of his poems have to do with darkness and death, he expierences alot of bad things in her life his father leaves his, his mom,sister, all of his family die of TB. and list goes on.