In my opinion Poe can be as pretentious as Cooper was. As
the footnotes of our books tell us, the epigraphs at the beginning of his works
are falsified. But how many people would have known back then? The general
population likely had no idea. So, like Cooper, it is very possible that Poe
was trying to sound smart. This habit extended beyond his writings, however.
According to Simon Singh in The Code Book, Poe claimed to the readers of Philadelphia’s Alexander Weekly Messenger that he could
decrypt any enciphered message that they sent him (p 81). Hundreds of messages
were sent, and he decrypted them all. One of the readers apparently called him
the, “the most profound and skillful cryptographer who ever lived” (Singh p81).
I say most of the last paragraph with sarcasm; Poe told his
readers to send in monoalphabetic substitution ciphers. These ciphers are when
one letter from the original message is replaced with another letter or symbol,
and that same symbol replaces that letter for the whole of the message. They’re
not very hard to crack at all.
When I was reading “Libeia,” I felt like Poe was being
pretentious in his work. As someone mentioned in class, there was just enough
references to make one feel like they understand and yet don’t really get the
comparisons that the narrator makes when talking about Libeia’s eyes. While
quite a few of the references are Greek in origin, there are definitely some
that seemed really obscure, even with a classical learning. (If the last
sentence turns out to be false, apologies in advance.)
But “Libeia” seems to be a one-time incident. While the
other stories we read for class all had the beginning epigraph, none of the
others stood out as drowning in references and “references.” “House of Usher”
had a few as well, but they didn’t feel so present. In both cases, the narrator
is known to be rather intelligent. So were these references a characterization
of the narrator or Poe trying to stand out?
I personally believe that it’s a combination of both. While the
other stories don’t have as many elusive references as “Libeia” did, I still
can’t get the story about his supposed “cryptography skills” out of my head. It
could also be a style of his early writings; “Libeia” is the earliest story in
the collection that we had to read. I would be up for reading more of Poe's work to see if there's any link.
(And fun fact: Poe did write a long piece called “The Gold
Bug” that uses cryptography as a point to find treasure.)
I won't deny that Poe's deluge of references in "Ligeia" comes across as a bit pretentious. His invocations are all over the place and really don't add much to the plot or to his character's development. With that said, I think these references do somehow add an extra layer of murky atmosphere to "Ligeia." As mentioned in class, much of what's appealing and, at times, maddening about Poe's writing is that sense of the unknown or the unknowable he imbues his stories with. These references you mention are indeed mystifying, even after one reads the footnotes. Sure, this might just be Poe toying with his reader or seeing how much he can get away with, but it might also be some sort of strange attempt to lend his story some extra ethereal dread. Looking elsewhere, I think your raising the question of whether this allusive voice is Poe's at all and not the narrator's is really perceptive. I'd agree with you that the answer is probably a bit of both, as Poe really does seem to leave bits and pieces of himself in his narrators. If nothing else, he could use the narrator excuse if any critics ever came at him for blindly picking his references.
ReplyDeleteThat Poe liked to fake stuff (and that he did a lot of that), doesn't necessarily make him pretentious. I associate pretentiousness with not just with deception, but also with an idea of taking oneself also very seriously. I think that's what's uncertain about Poe. He's playing games, and he knows that he's playing games, and he knows that playing games can itself be meaningful. By the way, Poe also uses codes in his novel, including invisible ink and a code in what seems to be a new alphabet!
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