Edgar Allan Poe has fascinated generations of readers. His tales and poems of sorrow, horror and superb pain are so inspiring and breathtaking that have become a part of our personal imaginarium.
His works were explored in the exhibition Terror of the Soul, organized by the Morgan Library & Museum in New York. The writing mastery of Poe was shown through his multiple poems, manuscripts, early printed editions and many other writing genres. An important key of Terror of the Soul was the fact it payed attention to the influence Poe’s work had on fellow writers such as Charles Dickens or Vladimir Nabokov.
Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore.
“Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,” I said. “art sure no craven,
Ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the Nightly shore –
Tell me what the lordly name is on the Night’s Plutonian shore!”
Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”
The Raven (1845), Edgar Allan Poe
Photography by Electric Percival