Poe

We
fans
pour
over HPL’s letters, stories, and poems. We chill at his eerie words. It's good to recall that he, too, was a fan and worshipped Poe. In a future ‘blog entry, I plan to show where in The Alchemist Lovecraft freely alludes to The Cask of Amontillado and at least chapter three of A. Gordon Pym.

In the meantime, we shall set the stage with this May 1922 trip to visit his hero’s home.


"At Fordham - thank Pegana {*} - we found the Poe cottage open, and forthwith entered a small world of magic. Poor Poe, a creature of poverty driven from pillar to post in hired houses and with no stable, ancestral furniture, left very little with which to embelish the interior; but his own desk is there, and the chair in which he wrote ... There are several Poe busts, a couple of awkward stuffed ravens, and some good Poe portraits. There are specimens of his handwriting and a lock of his hair. The atmosphere grows on one and finally grips one - it is so terribly vivid - the 'forties recalled in every sombre {sic} detail. The pitiful poverty shows - something sombre broods all over the place. I seemed to feel unseen batwings brush my cheek as I passed through a bare, cramped corridor. ... the house is so pathetically small ... and such hideous things have been written there. Such was the home of the man to whom I practically owe every genuine artistic impulse and method I possess. My master – the great original whose titanic powers I can so feebly seek to copy ... Edgar Allen Poe."




[H. P. Lovecraft: Letter From New York, ed. S.T. Joshi & David E. Schultz, isbn 1892389371, p. 15]

* Lord Dunsany's mythical creation and a favorite of HPL.