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The Life of Edgar Allan Poe
“All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.” Edgar Allan Poe. That quote is one of his most popular. Everything is a dream. There’s something about that line that so many people can identify with. It’s powerful. But for someone who brought such great stories, culture, and thought to this world, his life wasn’t so much a dream as it was a nightmare. One that never ended. A nightmare that was filled with solitude, desperation, loneliness. His only true companion was alcohol. Most of his writing reflects that very nightmare.
“In visions of the dark night
I have dreamed of joy departed-
But a waking dream of life and light
Hath left me broken-hearted.”
What made him capable of writing such dark stories and poetry? It was his firsthand experience with suffering. When you become a writer the number one rule is to write what you know. You know what you know, and you have to stick with that. And Poe’s stories are the perfect embodiment of that. The nightmare. Stories of dark impulses, hatred, and every other negative emotion you can imagine. He knew it, because he lived it. The life of Edgar Allan Poe.
The Beginning
