Ulalume

"Ulalume" is a poem written by Edgar Allan Poe in 1847. Much like a few of Poe's other poems (such as "The Raven", "Annabel Lee", and "Lenore"), "Ulalume" focuses on the narrator's loss of a beautiful woman due to her untimely death. Poe originally wrote the poem as an elocution piece and, as such, the poem is known for its focus on sound. Additionally, it makes many allusions, especially to mythology, and the identity of Ulalume herself, if a real person, has been questioned.

Overview

The poem takes place on a night in the "lonesome October" with a gray sky as the leaves are withering for the autumn season. In the region of Weir, by the lake of Auber, the narrator roams with a "volcanic" heart. He has a "serious and sober" talk with his soul, though he does not realize it is October or where his roaming is leading him. He remarks on the stars as night falls, remarking on the brightest one, and wonders if it knows that the tears on his cheeks have not yet dried. His soul, however, mistrusts the star and where it is leading them. Just as the narrator calms his soul, he realizes he unconsciously has walked to the vault of his "lost Ulalume" on the very night he had buried her one year before.

Analysis

Unlike Poe's poem "Annabel Lee", the narrator here is not conscious of his return to the grave of his lover. This reveals the speaker's dependence on Ulalume and her love; his loss of her leaves him not only sad but absolutely devastated and, by visiting her grave, he unconsciously subjects himself to further self-inflicted anguish.Kennedy, J. Gerald. "Poe, 'Ligeia,' and the Problem of Dying Women" collected in "New Essays on Poe's Major Tales", edited by Kenneth Silverman. Cambridge University Press, 1993: 117. ISBN 0521422434] The poem has a heavy focus on decay and deterioration: the leaves are "withering" and the narrator's thoughts are "palsied".Silverman, Kenneth. "Edgar A. Poe: Mournful and Never-ending Remembrance". New York: Harper Perennial, 1992: 336. ISBN 0050923318] The verses are purposefully sonorous, built around sound to create feelings of sadness and anguish. [Jannaccone, Pasquale (translated by Peter Mitilineos). " [http://www.eapoe.org/pstudies/ps1970/p1974101.htm The Aesthetics of Edgar Poe] ", collected in "Poe Studies", vol. VII, no. 1, June 1974: 7.] The poem employs Poe's typical theme of the "death of a beautiful woman", which he considered "the most poetical topic in the world". [Poe, Edgar Allan. "The Philosophy of Composition" (1846).] Biographers and critics have often suggested that Poe's obsession with this theme stems from the repeated loss of women throughout his life, including his mother Eliza Poe and his foster mother Frances Allan. [Weekes, Karen. "Poe's feminine ideal", collected in "The Cambridge Companion to Edgar Allan Poe", edited by Kevin J. Hayes. Cambridge University Press, 2002: 149. ISBN 0521797276]

The identity of Ulalume is questionable. Poetically, the name Ulalume emphasizes the letter "L", a frequent device in Poe's female characters such as "Annabel Lee", "Eulalie", and "Lenore". [Kopley, Richard and Kevin J. Hayes "Two verse masterworks: 'The Raven' and 'Ulalume'", as collected in "The Cambridge Companion to Edgar Allan Poe", edited by Kevin J. Hayes. Cambridge University Press, 2002: 200. ISBN 0521797276] If it really is a dead lover, Poe's choice to refer to Ulalume as "the thing" and "the secret" do not seem like endearing terms.Kagle, Steven E. "The Corpse Within Us", as collected in "Poe and His Times: The Artist and His Milieu", Benjamin Franklin Fisher IV, ed. Baltimore: The Edgar Allan Poe Society, 1990: 110. ISBN 0961644923] Ulalume may really be representative of death itself.

Allusions

Much work has been done by scholars to identify all of Poe's allusions, most notably by Thomas Ollive Mabbott, though other scholars suggest that the names throughout the poem should be valued only because of their poetic sounds. [Kopley, Richard and Kevin J. Hayes. "Two verse masterworks: 'The Raven' and 'Ulalume'", collected in "The Cambridge Companion to Edgar Allan Poe", edited by Kevin J. Hayes. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002: 197–198. ISBN 0521797276]

The title itself suggests wailing (from the Latin "ululare").Meyers, Jeffrey. "Edgar Allan Poe: His Life and Legacy". New York: Cooper Square Press, 1992: 211. ISBN 0815410387]

The narrator personifies his soul as the ancient Greek Psyche, representing the irrational but careful part of his subconsciousness. It is Psyche who first feels concerned about where they are walking and makes the first recognition that they have reached Ulalume's vault.

The bright star they see is Astarte, a goddess associated with Venus and connected with fertility and sexuality. The "sinfully scintillant planet" in the original final verse is another reference to Venus.Kennedy, J. Gerald. "Poe, 'Ligeia,' and the Problem of Dying Women" collected in "New Essays on Poe's Major Tales", edited by Kenneth Silverman. Cambridge University Press, 1993: 116. ISBN 0521422434] Astarte may represent a sexual temptress or a vision of the ideal. [Robinson, David. " [http://www.eapoe.org/pstudies/ps1970/p1975103.htm 'Ulalume' - The Ghouls and the Critics] ", collected in "Poe Studies". Volume VIII, Number 1 (June 1975): 9.]

Mount Yaanek, with its "sulphurous currents" in the "ultimate climes of the pole", has been identified as Mount Erebus, a volcano in Antarctica first sighted in 1841. However, there is no contemporary evidence demonstrating that Poe had Erebus in mind, while Yaanek's location is specified as being in "the realms of the boreal pole", indicating an Arctic location rather than an Antarctic one.

The Auber and Weir references in the poem may be to two contemporaries of Poe: Daniel François Esprit Auber, a composer of sad operatic tunes, [Wolosky, Shira. "Poetry and Public Discourse 1820 - 1910" collected in "The Cambridge History of American Literature Vol.4", ed. Sacvan Bercovitch, p. 260, [http://books.google.com.tr/books?id=QUyq3xYERgoC&pg=PA260&lpg=PA260&dq=%22Daniel+Auber%22++Ulalume&source=web&ots=mc9He4HALk&sig=giaiPteYg1RSAwEnXLyC4kCQEH0&hl=tr Online version of the book] (ret: 15 April 2008)] and Robert Walter Weir, a painter of the Hudson River School famous for his landscapes. [Nelson, Randy F. "The Almanac of American Letters". Los Altos, California: William Kaufmann, Inc., 1981: 185. ISBN 086576008X]

Publication history

Poe wrote the poem on the request of Reverend Cotesworth Bronson, who had asked Poe for a poem he could read at one of his lectures on public speaking. He asked Poe for something with "vocal variety and expression". Bronson decided not to use the poem Poe sent him, "Ulalume". Poe then submitted the poem to "Sartain's Union Magazine", which rejected it as too dense. [Silverman, Kenneth. "Edgar A. Poe: Mournful and Never-ending Remembrance". New York: Harper Perennial, 1991: 335. ISBN 0060923318] Poe probably saw Bronson's request as a personal challenge as well as an opportunity to enhance his renown, especially after his previous poem "The Raven" had also been demonstrated for its elocution style. [Kopley, Richard and Kevin J. Hayes. "Two verse masterworks: 'The Raven' and 'Ulalume'", collected in "The Cambridge Companion to Edgar Allan Poe", edited by Kevin J. Hayes. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002: 198. ISBN 0521797276]

"Ulalume - A Ballad" was finally published, albeit anonymously, in the ' in December, 1847. Originally, Poe had sold his essay "", then unpublished, to the "Reviews editor George Hooker Colton. Colton did not immediately print the manuscript, so Poe exchanged it for "Ulalume". [ [http://www.eapoe.org/WorkS/essays/index.htm#rationaleofverse The Essays, Sketches & Lectures of Edgar Allan Poe] , from the Poe Society online]

It was reprinted by Nathaniel Parker Willis, still anonymously, in the "Home Journal" with a note asking who the author was, on Poe's request, to stir up interest. Some, including Evert Augustus Duyckinck, presumed that the poem's author was Willis. [Thomas, Dwight & David K. Jackson. "The Poe Log: A Documentary Life of Edgar Allan Poe, 1809–1849." Boston: G. K. Hall & Co., 1987: 792. ISBN 0816187347.] The initial publication had 10 stanzas. Poe's literary executor Rufus Wilmot Griswold was the first to print "Ulalume" without its final stanza, now the standard version. [Robinson, David. " [http://www.eapoe.org/pstudies/ps1970/p1975103.htm 'Ulalume' - The Ghouls and the Critics] ", collected in "Poe Studies". Volume VIII, Number 1 (June 1975). p. 8.] Poe himself once recited the poem with the final stanza, but admitted it was not intelligible and that it was scarcely clear to himself. [Quinn, Arthur Hobson. "Edgar Allan Poe: A Critical Biography". Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998: 630. ISBN 0801857309]

Critical response

Aldous Huxley, in his essay "Vulgarity in Literature", calls "Ulalume" "a carapace of jewelled sound", implying it lacks substance. [Kopley, Richard and Kevin J. Hayes. "Two verse masterworks: 'The Raven' and 'Ulalume'", collected in "The Cambridge Companion to Edgar Allan Poe", edited by Kevin J. Hayes. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002: 197. ISBN 0521797276] Huxley uses the poem as an example of Poe's poetry being "too poetical", equivalent to wearing a diamond ring on every finger. [Huxley, Aldous. "Vulgarity in Literature", collected in "Poe: A Collection of Critical Essays", Robert Regan, editor. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall Inc., 1967: 32.] Poet Daniel Hoffman says the reader must "surrender his own will" to the "hypnotic spell" of the poem and its "meter of mechanical precision". "Reading 'Ulalume' is like making a meal of marzipan", he says. "There may be nourishment in it but the senses are deadened by the taste, and the aftertaste gives one a pain in the stomach". [Hoffman, Daniel. "Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe". Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1972: 69. ISBN 0807123218]

The poem did, however, receive some praise. George Gilfillan remarked in the "London Critic":

"These, to many, will appear only "words"; but what wondrous words! What a spell they wield! What a weird unity is in them! The instant they are uttered, a misty picture, with a tarn, dark as a murderer's eye, below, and the thin yellow leaves of October fluttering above, exponents of a misery which scorns the name of sorrow, is hung up in the chambers of your soul forever". [Phillips, Mary E. "Edgar Allan Poe: The Man". Volume II. Chicago: The John C. Winston Co., 1926: 1248.]

After Poe's death, Thomas Holley Chivers claimed "Ulalume" was plagiarized from one of his poems. Chivers made several similar unfounded accusations against Poe. [Moss, Sidney P. "Poe's Literary Battles: The Critic in the Context of His Milieu". Southern Illinois University Press, 1969: 101.] Even so, he said the poem was "nector mixed with ambrosia". [Chivers, Thomas Holley. "Chivers' Life of Poe", edited by Richard Beale Davis. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1952: 78.] Another friend of Poe, Henry B. Hirst, suggested in the January 22, 1848, issue of the "Saturday Courier" that Poe had found the "leading idea" of the poem in a work by Thomas Buchanan Read. [Campbell, Killis. "The Origins of Poe", "The Mind of Poe and Other Studies". New York: Russell & Russell, Inc., 1962: 147.]

Bret Harte composed a parody of the poem entitled "The Willows" featuring the narrator, in the company of a woman called Mary, running out of credit at a bar: "And I said 'What is written, sweet sister,/At the opposite side of the room?'/She sobbed, as she answered, 'All liquors/Must be paid for ere leaving the room.' [Walter Jerrold and R.M. Leonard (1913) A Century of Parody and Imitation. Oxford University Press: 344-6]

In other media

In F. Scott Fitzgerald's debut novel "This Side of Paradise", the protagonist Amory Blaine recites "Ulalume" while wandering through the countryside. Another character, Eleanor Savage, calls Blaine "the auburn-haired boy who likes 'Ulalume.'" When the two are caught in a thunderstorm, Savage volunteers to play the role of Psyche while Blaine recites the poem. [Fitzgerald, F. Scott. "This Side of Paradise". James L. W. West III, editor. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995: 206–209] In H. P. Lovecraft's novella "At the Mountains of Madness", a character refers to the poem. While looking at a mountain, a character suggests "this mountain, discovered in 1840, had undoubtedly been the source of Poe’s image when he wrote seven years later", followed by a few lines of "Ulalume". Roger Zelazny's 1993 novel, "A Night in the Lonesome October", gets it title from this poem, though the book seems to draw little else from Poe. In the Tennessee Williams play "A Streetcar Named Desire" the character Blanche DuBois likens the residence of her sister Stella to the "ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir", a reference to "Ulalume". In Stanley Kubrick's "Lolita" (1962), Humbert Humbert (James Mason) reads a fragment of the poem to Lolita (Sue Lyon). In his history of the Union Army, "This Hallowed Ground", Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Bruce Catton places the American Civil War Battle of Chickamauga as occurring in a dark and frightening place evocative of Poe's "ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir".

References

External links

* [http://www.cummingsstudyguides.net/Guides4/Ulalume.html#top Ulalume: A Study Guide]
* [http://www.authorsden.com/visit/viewarticle.asp?id=19050 The Inner World of Ulalume, by Edgar Allan Poe]