The Unknown Poe by Edgar Allan PoeMy rating: 2 of 5 stars
This slim volume contains much you will not find in your "unabridged" Poe collections. First, there is some Poe correspondence, prose and poems from his juvenilia, excerpts of his philosophical essay Eureka: A Prose Poem and more. This last is capstone to thread of the prose pieces where he minutely and even scientifically measures and analyses his imagination, admittedly one he finds easily fueled by alcohol. In a concluding section, Poe's criticism is sampled, including that of Percy Bysshe Shelley. Then, the analogy includes his supports especially among the french, his ardent promoter Charles Baudelaire, translator Stéphane Mallarmé, and others fans Paul Valéry, J. K. Huysmans, and André Breton. This is a unique anthology for the serious Poe fanatic.
Probably most interesting to me is how objectively and even scientifically Poe plumbed his psyche, charted the modes of his imagination. It recalled to me the words of Thoreau in Walden:
"Direct your eye right inward, and you'll find
A thousand regions in your mind
Yet undiscovered. Travel them, and be
Expert in home-cosmography."
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