Edgar Allan Poe and the Mystery of the Murderous Lamp
And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming,
And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted - nevermore!
In the final stanza of “The Raven,” Poe’s dramatic imagery seems vivid and descriptive at first reading. Yet a closer analysis suggests that something is badly awry. The facts are these:
- The raven is sitting, still is sitting, on a bust of Pallas.
- The bust of Pallas is above the chamber door.
- The lamplight is o’er him streaming.
- His shadow is thrown on the floor.
So where is the lamp? We may reasonably estimate that the door itself is 80-84 inches tall. The frame may be plain, or may be surmounted by a decorative entablature, which could add as much as 30 inches to the overall height. It also seems apparent that the bust of Pallas must be of a size to provide a suitable perching surface for a moderately large bird. We may therefore state with assurance that the raven is perched at a height somewhere in the vicinity of 8-9 feet.
In order for the lamplight to stream o’er the raven and throw its shadow on the floor, the lamp must logically be situated above and behind the bird. Yet this would seem to place it uncomfortably close to the ceiling; and in any case, surely this would be a profoundly inconvenient location for a lamp, whether oil or gas.
“Why do you do this thing, terrifel?” you ask. “Why can’t you simply accept the obvious fact that the language in ‘The Raven’ is intended purely to create atmosphere? What purpose does your literalist reading serve? Must you wring the life out of everything with your pointless reductionism? Must you destroy everything you touch?”
Yes and yes. However, it is wrong to dismiss such matters as lacking consequence. “The Raven” is one of the most famous poems ever written; and for good or ill, publishers often rely on illustrators to provide imagery complementing poetical works. An illustrator’s livelihood depends on how compellingly they can visualize the work of another. It is no exaggeration to suggest that “The Raven” could easily have a profound impact on an artist’s career. It could be the turning point between fame and ignominy. Indeed, it may even have killed a man.
Gustave Doré was one of the most gifted and prolific engravers of the 19th century. His classic illustrations graced the works of such literary greats as Milton, Danté, Coleridge and Cervantes, bringing him widespread critical and commercial success. In 1882 he was commissioned by New York publishers Harper & Brothers to produce a series of engravings for a special edition of Poe’s The Raven-- his first and only American commission, for which he was paid the sum of 30,000 francs. It also proved to be his last commission. The engravings were still unfinished when Doré died in January 1883 at the relatively young age of 51, reportedly of angina brought on by chronic asthma. So far as I know, I am the first to propose instead that Poe killed him.
It was the damned lamp, you see. In Doré’s drawings, published posthumously, the artist is clearly struggling to make some sense—any sense—of that infernal lamp. Compared to other elements in the drawings, its appearance is extremely tentative and curiously variable between drawings.
http://ncummings.com/poe/images/6.jpg
The first image depicting the infamous bust of Pallas occurs before the raven appears. Thus, Doré can get away with cutting the image short so that the lamp itself is not seen. We also observe that the artist has addressed the problem of ceiling clearance by cleverly employing a broken entablature and placing the bust on a projecting pedestal.
http://ncummings.com/poe/images/12.jpg
The second image is pure genius. Confronted by the manifest impossibility of the poem’s description, Doré provides a unique and elegant solution without contradicting the text: a concave mirrored backing. At a stroke, the exact placement of the lamp is rendered immaterial, as the mirror could theoretically focus and redirect a light source from anywhere in the room. Additionally, the mirror casts a dramatic halo around the bust of Pallas, plausibly accounting for its presence there in the first place. Did any such example of dramatic sculptural lighting actually exist in the 19th century? Or is it something that Doré just dreamed up to account for this specific instance? The only thing we can be sure of is that it wasn’t what Poe had in mind.
Nonetheless, Doré is obviously still not quite satisfied with this solution. He remains uncertain whether the lamp should still be placed above and behind the bust somehow. One suspects he was concerned that, if the light was in fact reflected from elsewhere, the room would necessarily be too bright for the dramatic shadowing effect suggested by the text. It is apparent from the above image that Doré did not live long enough to address this problem; the critical area directly behind the raven depicts only a vague, indecisive sketch-- which suspiciously resembles an incandescent light bulb, though such a device had only just been introduced commercially at that time and were almost unheard of as domestic lighting fixtures.
http://ncummings.com/poe/images/14.jpg
The next image is vague in all details and offers no fresh insights; though it seems clear that the light behind the raven must be the brightest light source in the room.
http://ncummings.com/poe/images/17.jpg
Here we see there is definitely something represented directly above the mirrored backing, though its intent remains obscure. Whatever it is, it appears more irregular than in the earlier image. In fact here it looks very much like the top of Lenore’s head (compare the first picture—that’s supposed to be Lenore peeking through the door; note the similarity of the hairline), so perhaps Doré was toying with the idea of depicting Lenore as the literal “light source” of the shadow which the raven casts. It is also possible that by this point the lamp had started to drive Doré to insanity and despair, and in his delirium he was anthropomorphizing it as the prophetic embodiment of Atropos, the spectre of Death.
http://ncummings.com/poe/images/19.jpg
Here, Doré is finally starting to flip out completely. The lamp has now become an elongated oval shape like the Eye of Sauron, an object of dark worship to which the narrator reaches out imploringly as he climbs the furniture like a frantic lemur. Even the ghosts of memory are freaked out by this display as they hastily flee the scene. The shadows cast on the floor have ceased to have any relationship to the light source or each other. Doré has totally forgotten about the poem by now and is simply depicting his inner agony as the lamp takes control of his mind. The raven is purely an afterthought at this point.
http://ncummings.com/poe/images/23.jpg
This is absolutely my favorite of these illustrations. Overwhelmed by his colossal flailing spaz attack, the narrator concludes by flopping bonelessly to the floor like a Muppet. I realize that Doré was himself no stranger to dramatically overwrought Romanticism; but I can’t help suspecting that he may have been poking fun at Poe a bit with this image.
Analyzed in this manner, it seems apparent in these images how the lamp from “The Raven” seized Dore’s attention, toyed with him, and then destroyed him. But what about other illustrators of Poe? How have they addressed this problem? A brief perusal of such artists reveals that no one was willing or able to confront the lamp.
For example, Édouard Manet was a pioneer of the Impressionist movement and one of the most influential artists of the 19th Century. Yet his attempt in 1875 to illustrate an edition of “The Raven” demonstrates clearly that he was in fact a total puss. When depicting the raven’s perch, Manet flinches away from the text, instead haphazardly throwing the bird’s shadow up and to the side while blatantly ignoring the lamp:
http://poestories.com/images/gallery/manet03.jpg
Yet by the very next image, Manet has already dissolved into panic. Cowering in shame, he hastily flings the bird’s shadow onto the floor and abandons the project completely.
http://poestories.com/images/gallery/manet04.jpg
Once, Manet was quoted as saying, “The principal person in a picture is light.” Yet when confronted with the lamp of “The Raven,” Manet flees in abject humiliation, his Impressionist credentials streaming down his leg like so much warm urine.
Noted illustrator Edmund Dulac makes a crafty attempt to strategically distract his audience from the problem of the lamp, even going so far as to cut the raven’s head off. Here, the bust of Pallas is shoved up to the very edge of the doorframe, while its shadow just sort of wanders uncertainly along the wall, with no idea of how to comport itself in the absence of a definite light source.
http://www.animationarchive.org/pics/dulacpoe04.jpg
John Tenniel, famed illustrator of Alice in Wonderland, pleads technical difficulties for his predictable failure to depict the lamp. “No room! No room!” his ostentatiously circular composition seems to declare disingenuously. “Oh if only it were possible to add a bit more verticality to this circle, so as to encompass a view of the lamp! But then it would no longer be a circle, which would violate the laws of Euclidean geometry. Be assured, you cannot possibly imagine the enormity of the consequences.”
http://i533.photobucket.com/albums/e...P1010490-2.jpg
In his illustrations for “The Raven,” Charles Staniland clearly depicts the phantom forces assaulting his crumbling mind as he grapples helplessly with the paradox of the unseeable lamp:
http://i533.photobucket.com/albums/e...l/P1010488.jpg
Looking closer at that last image, note that the marble “bust of Pallas” upon which the raven perches has begun to flow and coagulate into an amorphous, gelatinous horror, its very nature transmuted beneath the eldritch radiations of the lamp like a hallucinatory episode out of William Burroughs. Meanwhile, the hideous insectile bat-raven hybrid chitters quietly to itself as it peers down, eyestalks twitching.
http://i533.photobucket.com/albums/e...l/P1010487.jpg
Do you begin to see how it all fits together? I urge you to consider Poe’s abiding interests in cryptography and abnormal psychology. Did he commit the perfect crime? Has the evidence been sitting in plain sight all these years, just like the proverbial “purloined letter?” Did he kill Gustave Doré from beyond the grave?
Perhaps, despite all the evidence, you remain unconvinced. What more can I say? The truth is before you. How can I make you understand?
Or are you merely feigning ignorance? Even now, are you mocking me with your silence? Of course, you see it too! You have seen it all along!
Villains! Dissemble no more! It is here, before you! Look! It is the lighting of his hideous lamp!
http://i533.photobucket.com/albums/e...l/P1010489.jpg
