Edgar Allen Poe Part 1
Welcome! To see this essay in one piece or to read other stories by Hanns Heinz Ewers that I have translated please go to Hanns Heinz Ewers.
Copyright 2008 by Joe E. Bandel
Protected under United States Copyright Law as a derivative work of a foreign Author originally published prior to 1923.
Edgar Allen Poe
By Hans Heinz Ewers
First published by Schuster & Loeffler, Berlin/Leipzig 1906
(English translation 2008 by Joe E. Bandel)
This booklet is dedicated to
Gustav Meyrink
Drunken Artist, dreamer, he believed dreams are the true reality just as Poe did. He wrote what he dreamed.
In the Alhambra
April 1905
Hanns Heinz Ewers
My feet stride lightly upon the morning stones of the old way that I have so often traveled up through the sacred groves at Alhambra. I long for that vast world behind the jeweled gate where time flies. I wander so lightly in the dreamland, where the elms rustle, where the spring babbles, where a hundred nightingales sing out from the laurel bushes. I can certainly reflect upon my poet there.
You should not do it. Really not. You should not go there and read any book about an artist you love. How can a priest speak about God? You need to be careful, so very careful.
This is what you should do:
You love Firdusi? Don’t you know Goethe wrote about him? Good. First of all learn what he said about the Persian before you begin. Then after you have learned enough and are ready to write about your favorite, decide what he would have written, you will not be disappointed.
It doesn’t matter what the critics write about the artist you love. If the critics boast about him being a star or say he is only a wisp of mist- it doesn’t matter! It doesn’t matter if the critics know enough because you know. You are telling the truth about your artist.
I haven’t done it this way. I’ve got a few drops of thick flowing German thoroughness in my blood, a sense of duty.
I thought:
Before I write about my favorite artist, what have others written before me?
I thought:
“Perhaps—“
Many have written about Edgar Allen. Only I’ve been disappointed, so very disappointed. There was just one able to grasp the spirit of him.
There was only Baudelaire. Baudelaire whose art came from hashish. How could he not grasp him, he who formed valuable art out of alcohol and laudanum.
Now I need to forget what the others have said. I must forget the horrible Griswold whose poisonous vomit is not a Poe biography.
“He drank too much, he drank too much, such a shame, he drank too much!”
Also I must forget the horrible fool Ingram who would defend my artist’s honor in return by stammering “He did not drink, really, he did not drink”.
Quick, before I forget I’ll put down the dates I have about him:
Edgar Allen Poe, born on 19 January 1809 in Boston. Irish family, long pedigree, Norman, Celtic, Anglo-Saxon, Italian blood. 1816 to England with his foster parents, a couple of years in a boarding school in Stoke-Newington, 1822 back to America, 1826 student in Richmond, then in Charlottesville, 1827 travel through Europe with unknown adventures, 1830 Cadet Officer at West Point, 1834 Head of the Southern Literary Messenger in Richmond. 1836 married his cousin Virginia Clemm. He wrote. He lived in various places, in New York, Philadelphia, Richmond, and Fordham. He had a rough time. “He drank too much”, (said Griswold). “He does not drink”, (said Ingram). He died on 7 October in a hospital for the poor in Baltimore, forty years old.
So, these are the all-important dates. Now I can forget.
How difficult it is. For a long time I go along the elm lined avenue up to the royal palace. I turn left and enter the gate to the mighty tower of the Law. I am glad of the hand above that averts the evil eye. I think, this might keep my moralists outside. Now I am above, alone in the familiar spaces.
I know exactly where I want to go. Quick through the myrtle courtyard, through the hall of the Mocaraben into the courtyard of the twelve lions. Enter left into the room of the two sisters and through it to the Ajimeces. Now I’m there in Mirador de Daraxa, where Boabdil’s mother Aicha lived. I sit by a window looking out on the old cypress trees.
How hard it still is to forget! There go my moralists strolling in the garden. Two English hypocrites with round hats, short pipes, black jackets and reviews in their hands.
“He drinks too much”, hisses one.
“Oh no, he does not drink at all”, chimes the other.
I would like to knock their heads together!
“Go away you rats, go away! I’m sitting here dreaming about an artist I love. He sang in your language and you sticks know nothing about him!”
They left all right. Be certain of that. I am alone once more.
He drinks too much. He does not drink. That is how the Englanders argue about their poet. They let Milton starve, they steal Shakespeare’s entire life’s work, they scrabble with crooked fingers in Byron’s and Shelley’s family history, they vilify Rossetti and Swinburne, stick Wilde in prison and point their fingers at Charles Lamb and Poe. Because they drank!
I’m so glad that I’m a German! Germany’s great men are permitted to be indecent. Indecent—Certainly that means not as decent as the good citizens and moralists. The Germans say, “Goethe was a great poet.” They knew he had vices but did not consider them.
The Englanders say, “Byron was indecent, therefore he was not a great poet.”
Only in England could the repulsive moral preacher Kingsley create a household phrase about Heine.
“Don’t speak of him. He was a bad man!”
When no one listens, when people gather round to acknowledge the “indecent” English poet they love, the Englander is finally compelled to speak and then he will lie. He does not give up on his hypocrisy. He says then, “After further examination he was not at all indecent but of high morals, completely pure and completely blameless!
This is why the English liar could not take it any more and vindicated Wilde’s honor with a Saul to Paul conversion. The same with Poe and Ingram’s reply to Griswold.
“Oh no, He did not really drink!”
The English have only now after all this time officially recognized that Edgar Allan Poe was a decent man!
We however, never make a big deal of middle class and moralistic purity. We love him even if he drank. Still more, we love him because he drank. Even though toxins destroyed his body, great art sprang out of his life’s blood, that was his gift. The layman does not determine how great art originates. It comes from out of the artist himself. No one is permitted a say in this or a derogatory judgement or cut-down.
Only the few whose insight perceives the creative process because they love him, only they are permitted to watch in silence, to comment.
Wilde related the fairy tale of the lovely rose created from the heart’s blood of a dead nightingale. The fallow student looked and wondered, never had he seen such a marvelous blood red rose. But he had no idea how it was created.
Copyright 2008 by Joe E. Bandel
Protected under United States Copyright Law as a derivative work of a foreign Author originally published prior to 1923.
Edgar Allen Poe
By Hans Heinz Ewers
First published by Schuster & Loeffler, Berlin/Leipzig 1906
(English translation 2008 by Joe E. Bandel)
This booklet is dedicated to
Gustav Meyrink
Drunken Artist, dreamer, he believed dreams are the true reality just as Poe did. He wrote what he dreamed.
In the Alhambra
April 1905
Hanns Heinz Ewers
My feet stride lightly upon the morning stones of the old way that I have so often traveled up through the sacred groves at Alhambra. I long for that vast world behind the jeweled gate where time flies. I wander so lightly in the dreamland, where the elms rustle, where the spring babbles, where a hundred nightingales sing out from the laurel bushes. I can certainly reflect upon my poet there.
You should not do it. Really not. You should not go there and read any book about an artist you love. How can a priest speak about God? You need to be careful, so very careful.
This is what you should do:
You love Firdusi? Don’t you know Goethe wrote about him? Good. First of all learn what he said about the Persian before you begin. Then after you have learned enough and are ready to write about your favorite, decide what he would have written, you will not be disappointed.
It doesn’t matter what the critics write about the artist you love. If the critics boast about him being a star or say he is only a wisp of mist- it doesn’t matter! It doesn’t matter if the critics know enough because you know. You are telling the truth about your artist.
I haven’t done it this way. I’ve got a few drops of thick flowing German thoroughness in my blood, a sense of duty.
I thought:
Before I write about my favorite artist, what have others written before me?
I thought:
“Perhaps—“
Many have written about Edgar Allen. Only I’ve been disappointed, so very disappointed. There was just one able to grasp the spirit of him.
There was only Baudelaire. Baudelaire whose art came from hashish. How could he not grasp him, he who formed valuable art out of alcohol and laudanum.
Now I need to forget what the others have said. I must forget the horrible Griswold whose poisonous vomit is not a Poe biography.
“He drank too much, he drank too much, such a shame, he drank too much!”
Also I must forget the horrible fool Ingram who would defend my artist’s honor in return by stammering “He did not drink, really, he did not drink”.
Quick, before I forget I’ll put down the dates I have about him:
Edgar Allen Poe, born on 19 January 1809 in Boston. Irish family, long pedigree, Norman, Celtic, Anglo-Saxon, Italian blood. 1816 to England with his foster parents, a couple of years in a boarding school in Stoke-Newington, 1822 back to America, 1826 student in Richmond, then in Charlottesville, 1827 travel through Europe with unknown adventures, 1830 Cadet Officer at West Point, 1834 Head of the Southern Literary Messenger in Richmond. 1836 married his cousin Virginia Clemm. He wrote. He lived in various places, in New York, Philadelphia, Richmond, and Fordham. He had a rough time. “He drank too much”, (said Griswold). “He does not drink”, (said Ingram). He died on 7 October in a hospital for the poor in Baltimore, forty years old.
So, these are the all-important dates. Now I can forget.
How difficult it is. For a long time I go along the elm lined avenue up to the royal palace. I turn left and enter the gate to the mighty tower of the Law. I am glad of the hand above that averts the evil eye. I think, this might keep my moralists outside. Now I am above, alone in the familiar spaces.
I know exactly where I want to go. Quick through the myrtle courtyard, through the hall of the Mocaraben into the courtyard of the twelve lions. Enter left into the room of the two sisters and through it to the Ajimeces. Now I’m there in Mirador de Daraxa, where Boabdil’s mother Aicha lived. I sit by a window looking out on the old cypress trees.
How hard it still is to forget! There go my moralists strolling in the garden. Two English hypocrites with round hats, short pipes, black jackets and reviews in their hands.
“He drinks too much”, hisses one.
“Oh no, he does not drink at all”, chimes the other.
I would like to knock their heads together!
“Go away you rats, go away! I’m sitting here dreaming about an artist I love. He sang in your language and you sticks know nothing about him!”
They left all right. Be certain of that. I am alone once more.
He drinks too much. He does not drink. That is how the Englanders argue about their poet. They let Milton starve, they steal Shakespeare’s entire life’s work, they scrabble with crooked fingers in Byron’s and Shelley’s family history, they vilify Rossetti and Swinburne, stick Wilde in prison and point their fingers at Charles Lamb and Poe. Because they drank!
I’m so glad that I’m a German! Germany’s great men are permitted to be indecent. Indecent—Certainly that means not as decent as the good citizens and moralists. The Germans say, “Goethe was a great poet.” They knew he had vices but did not consider them.
The Englanders say, “Byron was indecent, therefore he was not a great poet.”
Only in England could the repulsive moral preacher Kingsley create a household phrase about Heine.
“Don’t speak of him. He was a bad man!”
When no one listens, when people gather round to acknowledge the “indecent” English poet they love, the Englander is finally compelled to speak and then he will lie. He does not give up on his hypocrisy. He says then, “After further examination he was not at all indecent but of high morals, completely pure and completely blameless!
This is why the English liar could not take it any more and vindicated Wilde’s honor with a Saul to Paul conversion. The same with Poe and Ingram’s reply to Griswold.
“Oh no, He did not really drink!”
The English have only now after all this time officially recognized that Edgar Allan Poe was a decent man!
We however, never make a big deal of middle class and moralistic purity. We love him even if he drank. Still more, we love him because he drank. Even though toxins destroyed his body, great art sprang out of his life’s blood, that was his gift. The layman does not determine how great art originates. It comes from out of the artist himself. No one is permitted a say in this or a derogatory judgement or cut-down.
Only the few whose insight perceives the creative process because they love him, only they are permitted to watch in silence, to comment.
Wilde related the fairy tale of the lovely rose created from the heart’s blood of a dead nightingale. The fallow student looked and wondered, never had he seen such a marvelous blood red rose. But he had no idea how it was created.
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