Thiis has been bugging me for years…at the end of EA poe’s classic story “THE PREMATURE BURIAL” (possibly the scariest story he wrote-still gives me the creeps), there is a reference to “Afrasiab” making a voyage down the Oxus river…The Oxus (now called Amu Darya, is a river in central asia (flows into the Caspian sea). But who was Afrasiab?-this is a reference to some classical literature, but I don’t know from where-does anybody know what this refers to?
Afrasiab is a legendary ancient Persian king whose exploits are related in the epic poem Shahnamah by Firdawsi. Poe also wrote about Tamerlane, the Islamic angel Israfel, and a chapter from the Qur’an, “Al Aaraf.”
Poe participated in the early 19th-century Romantic trend of “Orientalism” which borrowed themes from Middle Eastern lore. Washington Irving and Ralph Waldo Emerson also wrote orientalist pieces. In Europe, the trend had examples like Goethe’s West-East Divan and Thomas Moore’s Lalla Rookh: An Oriental Romance.
American Orientalism, which drew so much on Islam, is almost totally unknown today, so without any cultural memory, we Americans react to Islam as a stranger, a newcomer, even though it’s been here for a long time.
Here’s a little free bonus knowledge…
Afrasiab was the legendary wicked king of Turan (now western Turkistan), who betrayed the Persian hero Rustum by means of a hidden pit bristling with spears and swords. Before he died, Rustum had the satisfaction of killing Afrasiab with an arrow.
Also…Carathis, who appears earlier in the same paragraph, was the name of the witch in William Beckford’s Gothic romance VATHEK who enjoys the treasure of Hell for one day before being condemned to eternal damnation.
The entire final paragraph of “The Premature Burial” is “drawn from”* Horace Binney Wallace’s novel STANLEY (1838), according to Stephen Peithman’s ANNOTATED TALES OF POE (Doubleday, 1981).
- plagarizing
OK, you wanna bandy about bonus knowledge (rolling up sleeves)?
Poe’s parents were itinerant actors, and were buried in a potter’s field in New York. That field is now Bryant Park on 6th and 42nd Street—so you may very well be eating lunch only several feet above Poe’s parents!
Well, if you’re going to get TOUGH about it…
Poe spent several years in New Orleans in the early 1840s, writing for the Picayune, honing his fiction, and whiling away the afternoons in various absinthe houses. Before returning to the North, he made quite a name for himself in the Crescent City, achieving a sort of “favorite son” status. As a going-away gift, the best known chefs in town agreed to name the author’s favorite luncheon sandwich after him.
And that’s why, when you get down to N’Awlins, to this very day, you can still enjoy a Poe Boy.
Outta the way . . .
In Baltimore, the house Poe lived in was moved time and time again, as construction and demolition changed the cityscape. It was finally relocated by Druid Hill Park. So many people couldn’t find it by this time that a poem had to be written to give directions . . .
. . . “Over the Hill to the Poe House.”
When I see these stories appear at the Snopes web site, I will stand proudly and say “I was there, and I saw it happen! I saw them pluck the story from the air, and set it down upon the SDMB table like a ripe fruit.”
{grabs the microphone away}
And we all remember the misbegotten business venture of 1846, when Poe went into a publishing partnership with millionaire Bostonian Aloysius Richards. The Poe/Richards Almanac folded after only three issues.
And the infamous smear campaign of editor Rufus Griswold, who attempted to paint Poe as a man with no faith in humanity, a drop-out from the University of Virginia, a friendless wretch and slave to alcohol and opium. Yet Griswold was unable to attack the author’s scrupulous business accounting, admitting that he was “Poe, but honest.”
Nevertheless, the man was undoubtedly in dire financial straits during his final days. When he and Richards were brought up on vagrancy charges in Philadephia, they were BOTH sentenced to thirty days in prison. As Anatole France later wrote, “The law, in its majestic equality, forbids Richards as well as Poe to sleep under bridges.”
HEY! One atta time!
Of course there was the time Poe finally escaped city life and bought a farm. Reuben MacDonald finally purchased it from Poe when the writer needed more money for drink.
As the neighbors still sing to this day: “Old MacDonald had a farm—E.A., E.A. Poe!”
Ah, yes, I remember that. Poe bought the farm in 1849, didn’t he?
Ye Gods! And people wonder why I never get to MPSIMS anymore. I’m gone five minutes, and this pops up.
Well, shoo! Both of you! This is an imPoetent forum, and the Poesters here don’t appreciate your Poe attempts at humor.
Ahem. Here’s some real Poe trivia for the curious.
EAP was born with a vestigial cranial ridge. Yep, a throwback to h. erectus, he was. It wasn’t particularly pronounced, but there it was. From studying him, the scientists of the day were able to learn much about early hominids that could not be divined from the fossil record. Among the most stunning is that the ridge contained blood vessels and was consistently .8 degree Centigrade warmer than the rest of the body, sending slightly heated blood to the brain. The hypothesis is that this adaptation allowed consciousness first to develop and for early hominds to learn to cooperate rather than fight. The theory is known as Peace: Poe ridge hot.
Dear Moderator–
Is it possible that, instead of locking a thread, the thread be burned, the ashes scattered, and all memory of it wiped from the face of the earth?
Pee-you! I thought the Stinkymeat link was smelly, until I read these puns!
Did you know that Poe founded the first feminist magazine, in the 1830s? It didn’t go over well at all, so he corked it in an old gin bottle and tossed it into the ocean.
More than a century later, while fishing, Gloria Steinem discovered it bobbing in the Atlantic, opened it up and it gave the the idea of a lifetime.
Yes, it was “Ms. Found in a Bottle.”
I find it hard to believe that nobody has yet mentioned the scandal that Poe’s literature caused in several of the more conservative states. In fact, his macabre fictions were so reviled by the legislatures of several states that they imposed heavy tarrifs on the import of any of Edgar’s stories or poems into their jurisdictions. This sorry state of affairs lasted for all of Poe’s life and decades after his death until a challenge brought before the Supreme Court finally ended the insidious Poe tax.
See, manny? If you don’t come to MPSIMS, we bring MPSIMS to you!
Few are aware of the amazing run of poets and other literary figures in Poe’s ancestral line. Indeed, the lineage may be traced back to 8th century China, and one of the greatest of all the pre-T’ang Dynasty versifiers.
I speak, of course, of Annabel Li Po.
It is a little know fact the E.A. Poe wrote a play about Texas’s favorite mammal. The play was dedicated to all the actors and actresses in it. The dedication read "To: The cast of the Armadillo.
Keith
Thanks for the “fun” posts…but I really want to know why Poe usesa fictional ancient persian king, in the context of this macabre tale of people being buried alive…anybody know why?
Well, ishmintingas was pointing the way, back in post number two. The gratuitous addition of wacky non-Western stuff and pedantic footnotes was considered hep and forward-looking by Poe. That sort of thing was later picked up by Baudelaire (in the '50s and 60’s) and the Decadents (in the '80s and '90s), who overdid it enough to make us giggle at their stuff a bit. Then Modernism came in in the early 20th century and washed the slate clean. Ezra Pound used to make raucous fun of that style of poetry, when he wasn’t mocking the Jews or doing radio broadcasts for Mussolini.
If I may quote the ANNOTATED POE again…
“The literary flimflammery here tells us that while the narrator may have learned to be less hysterical, he is still a man prone to reveries and fancies, who could find himself in another uncomfortable situation because of his overemotional nature.”
<< The theory is known as Peace: Poe ridge hot. >>
For the love of God, Montressor! … and besides, that stuff about the his cranial bumps is an unproved hyPoethesis.
19 years later and you blowhards still haven’t communicated the story of Afrasiab’s voyage down the Oxus (or Amu Darya, or whatever you call it)