Poe did not die in the gutter. "Didn't Poe die in the gutter?" How many times have I been asked this question? In response to this question, a business educated woman once heard my explanation of true events and wondered why the myths were so pervasive. Then I tried to explain how human beings prefer the legend to the truth.
She was a person who had wrapped herself up in the mulitiple myths of capitalism, christianity, corporatism, republicanism, and even good manners (as her advisors dictated). My lifestyle choices didn't compute with what she was used to. She grew up amongst white, Republican, christians in the suburbs where perfection is mandantory. She was amazed that I did not rent a private bank deposit box in which to contain my birth certificate. When she spotted me reading a commentary on a novel I had been reading during my lunch hour, she told me that was cheating. (I wasn't in school and I wasn't facing a test. As I remember, even preachers use commentaries.) Where does one begin to discuss myth with people who inhabit the fairy tale realities they envision to the exclusion of reality? I decided to stop talking to her after she declared, without having read a page of his work, that Freud was a pervert. She was almost as bad as that fat-headed, religious moron in Gardena who said to me, on the eve of my receiving an MFA from the UCLA Film School, that she hadn't decided yet if FILM was an art form.
On October 3, 1849, chronic alcoholic Edgar Allan Poe had been found in a Baltimore tavern "rather the worse for wear." He was admitted to the Washington College Hospital and placed under the care of Dr. John J. Moran, the resident physician. To the doctor, Poe seemed to be suffering from delirium tremens, acute alcohol poisoning. He was raving and seeing things.
"To this state succeeded tremor of the limbs, and at first a busy, but not violent or active delirium--constant talking--and vacant converse with spectral and imaginary objects on the walls. His face was pale and his whole person drenched inperspiration."
--- Dr. John J. Moran to Mrs. Maria Clemm, November 15, 1849
Continued in October 4th post.
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