|
|
Article: Into the abyss.(Poe: A Life Cut Short)(Book review)
- Article from:
- National Review
- Article date:
- February 9, 2009
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2009 National Review, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
|
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Poe: A Life Cut Short, by Peter Ackroyd (Nan A. Talese, 224 pp., $21.95)
EMERSON and the New England Transcendentalists loftily professed to know nothing much about evil, that hoary idea from the childhood of the race. But a noted contemporary of the "Frog-Pondians" (as he called them), Edgar Allan Poe, knew much about evil in man and in nature: the labyrinthine passages of self-deception, the human capacity for tormenting others, the horror of death, and the greater horror of the dead who yet walk.
Among the great imaginative writers of the 19th century, it is Poe (1809-49) and Nathaniel Hawthorne, with their knowledge ...