4 - Poe’s humor

Summary

Sphinx or hoax? Aside from the poète maudit, the satanic dandy revered by Baudelaire, and the alleged dope-ridden neurotic gratifying public tastes with the morbid paraphernalia of his Gothic tales, Poe was also a born humorist equally inspired by parody and self-mockery. In an anti-romantic vein so common among the popular humorists of his time, he enjoyed applying his acumen to deride the outpourings of emotions too often surging from mediocre fiction and poetry. Through a mysterious alchemy, humor was at least for him a short-lived euphoric response apt to exorcise the fiendish visions harassing his mind. This Janus figure seemed to view the world in two opposite directions, yet sometimes provided a dual perspective to reconcile extremes paradoxically. In his Anthologie de l'Humour Noir, André Breton held that the contradiction between the acclaimed poet of “The Raven” and the wretched drunkard, was itself humorous since it implied an open conflict involving logical lucidity at odds with the vapors of liquor. Plagued with his physical insufficiencies and mental strains, Poe was able, however, to overcome his sense of alienation and filter the agonizing material he stumbled over in his private life and literary career, thus intermittently giving himself narcissistic comfort through an economy of expenditure in feeling, as Freud later defined the process.