Art in Literature: Edgar Allan Poe - Esther

When I first started skulking about on social media, I used to post art I liked & thought people would like to see. What people didn’t know about sometimes surprised me but sometimes it surprised me when they did. A case in point was when I started posting Harry Clarke’s Edgar Allan Poe illustrations. Some of my more aesthetically dark-sided friends would say those were their favourite Poe illustrations but they never knew who the artist was. This seems to me to have been the problem throughout art history – we lose skills, knowledge & methods by paying less attention to the artists & craftspeople than the subjects or patrons. But let’s leave that rant for another time. 

I was never a fairytale type – the lack of independence in those women annoyed me from a young age but Ed was an equal opportunities storyteller. Sure the women got a rough deal but the men suffered badly from it. It’s easy to forget the mortality rates of the time. Regardless of what might’ve gone on in his personal life, characters were often treated equally badly (killed) or vengeance was sought & found. For me, this was more like it but interestingly several artists (Clarke included) illustrated both Poe’s & Perrault’s (for example) stories. Both are rich seams for a visual artist & although it is said Poe had no time for allegory, so his stories are continually picked apart for hidden meaning as are many (most? all?) fairytales. With Poe, the macabre becomes almost commonplace, expected & is completely unfettered. Despite something romantic or supernatural going on events have a direct effect on the worldly, which makes them all the more grotesque. You can smell all that disturbed soil. The film versions of his works rarely cut it – nothing comes close to the stylised, almost uptight language & creeping, raw suspense…except when an illustration does the job. Art rescues us again: the grave opens up & an artist is there to record it. 

Warning: May Contain Spoilers.

Much as the protagonist must gaze deeply into the wall-tomb to see the results of his handiwork, so must we look intensely into Clarke’s depiction of the Black Cat & his mistress. They appear as a two-headed, three-eyed single creature & in this way they are united in wreaking revenge & the narrator’s downfall. From an artistic viewpoint, The Black Cat for me represents a tedious line in art history habit: that of comparing artists. It’s a lazy way to view art but frequently, Harry Clarke’s illustration is compared with Aubrey Beardsley’s. But their individual treatments of this subject show very different approaches, styles & most significantly, levels of detail. Not to mention credibility…

…however, Beardsley’s illustration from The Fall of the House of Usher suits his style. There sits Roderick Usher full of worry & reflection, echoing the miserable surroundings of the Usher house & its ultimate doom. Beardsley’s minimalist (yet immaculate) line work affords the scene an almost clinical atmosphere. It was with this story that Poe was criticised for having created his own “formula” in story-telling, that he too frequently settled on the same themes of mental illness, disease & death. All the things we’ve come to love him for.

Arthur Rackham also had a crack at the works of Poe. In spite of successfully developing his own brand of macabre & twisted nature, I don’t see an innate affinity in the two minds at work as much as a vague sympathy & cheeky recognition. Poe’s animals are unthinking brutes sent to torment us; Rackham’s are eye-twinkling, knowing, sentient tyrants. That said, although there are many great covers of Poe’s works, I love the swirling blizzard of anticipated gloom & devastation Rackham manages to convey. 

I could get several blogs-worth of material for The Raven alone. I’ve even got him as a tattoo. Artists not only respond to the Romanticism & visual imagery the poem affords, but the word “Nevermore” often appears in the work itself. This not only alludes to the word’s significance in the poem but the finality & suggestion of mortality it presents. Gustave Doré not only illustrated Poe & Perrault, but also Dante, Cervantes & Coleridge. His Raven resembles a bat & there is an air of several other horror film tropes yet to come in this 1884 engraving.

Édouard Manet’s Raven is sometimes pictured more like a rook in my opinion but since differences in common names for birds occur in all continents (& since we don’t have access to the scientific names, ahem) I’ve selected his less distinct but beautiful “raven” in flight…

Less frequently seen are the 1905 illustrations of Alberto Martini. Martini is considered to be a predecessor of the Surrealists but the ghoulish nature of his works also encapsulates the spirit of Poe. This illustration for The Murders in the Rue Morgue toys with the concept of showing less to achieve more, which chimes with the philosophy of much modern horror & other fiction.

Serial Poe illustrator Abigail Larson has worked with the Poe Museum & despite the dress & general Victoriana, lends a modern style to the poems & stories. Since Clarke, I don’t feel anyone else’s aesthetic is as accessible or as in keeping with Poe’s & rarely have other artists done the women justice. Here, Berenice has presumably died of one of Poe’s beloved unspecified illnesses & thankfully her later fate is not pictured too brutally. Almost unbelievably, I think this is one of Poe’s more odd tales. It has the spirit of Surrealist film at its heart. It’s also one of his more violent (towards humans) & was heavily criticised for this at the time of publishing, despite the violence being merely implied.

In Larson’s depiction of Poe himself, sad old Ed has his Lenore, his Raven & his Black Cat for company.

Consecutively: Abigail Larson, Horst Janssen, Samuel Casal, Esther Green, Harry Clarke. 

Of course, Ed’s own perennially despondent visage is also a favoured subject for artistic interpretation. Whilst some have portrayed him with his mangled ideas & possible illnesses, others have gone for showing his mental state or crumbling humanity. There are of course well-known photographs - a little wonky but nevertheless surprisingly variable in mood if you care to look closer.