Should you find yourself in NYC this February, mosey on down to west side and check out LITFO alumn:
Jeremiah Johnson.
@
Kostabi World
(A Converge Gallery Pop-Up)
Opening Thursday Feb. 7th 6-9pm
514 W. 24th Street New York, NY.
Tuesday, January 8, 2013
Ain't ova till it's ova...
What Remains: Traces of Poe has been extended! We will continue to grace Detour Gallery's elegant storefront until January 18th.
Here's a little essay CHER member Jessie Clark whipped up in honor of the installation:
For as long as I can remember, my thoughts of Poe have
always stretched to include young cousin-wife Virginia Clemm. Such gossip-centric
details do not color and cloak the reputations of similar figures with equal
force or consistency; I’ve no comprehension of Melville’s personal life for
instance. This inability to separate the Personal Poe from Professional is not unique:
Poe’s romantic life has long been a point of fascination to even the most
general audience. Why should this be? Though unconventional by today’s
standards, first cousin pairings were not uncommon at the time (the age
difference does stand out however). I believe the cause for persistent prying transcends
a tendency towards sensationalism, the glossy tabloid-esque obsessions of today.
These glimpses of a marriage, the circumstances of Clemm’s life and death offer
us rare insight into Poe’s inner emotional life when taken in conjunction with
his writing. This makes her essential to gaining a greater understanding of
Poe’s work as well as his mental state. Two short stories in particular stand
out in this regard.
While preparing for What
Remains: Traces of Poe (an art installation I mounted in conjunction with a
colleague), I listened to audio books of Poe’s work in order to fully saturate
my artistic focus with Poe-ness. As luck would have it, audio renditions of Berenice and Eleanora appeared almost side by side. When taken in close succession,
these tales create an interesting juxtaposition. While Eleanora and Berenice
involve a somewhat similar set of circumstances each is executed in a
completely different key. Our respective narrators’ romantic lives hold certain
traits in common (as does Poe): all three fall in love with his respective
first cousin(s) all three cousin-lovers fall deathly ill. It is here where the
similarities end and these stories diverge.
While Berenice is
easily pegged as a classic gothic tale (to this untrained critic), full of
madness, obsession, horror, and a bit of premature burial for good measure, Eleanora is not so easily classified.
Though the narrator claims madness, the tale is no dark and broody slog through
the dim corners of one’s mind. It reads as a bittersweet song dedicated to
love, loss, and moving on. Yes, there are trappings of the supernatural as well
as some cyclical thinking from a deeply devoted narrator, but these bits are
not pervasive. Where Berenice is dark
and claustrophobic, Eleanora is fresh
and free moving (aerated and unbound) much of the action takes place outdoors
in the idyllic “Valley of the Many-Colored Grass.” Where Berenice’s Egaeus’ obsession sends him spiraling further downward
into the muck and mire of madness (towards a grotesque end), Eleanora’s unnamed narrator (UN) is able
to let go and move on with seeming success. Egaeus is fixed in his despair.
Berenice involves
cousins unalike in temperament, Egaeus (our narrator) is “ill of health and
buried in gloom,” while his cousin is “agile, graceful, and overflowing with
energy.”
“Hers, the
ramble on the hillside/mine the studies of the cloister.”
Though UN alludes to similar leanings in his love (“artless
and innocent as the brief life she led among the flowers”), he is not separated
from her as Egaeus is from his Berenice; he joins Eleanora on her romps through
the valley. Their love is realized amongst trees and flowers, star shaped
blooms burst forth as if answer to their passion. When Eleanora passes seasons
change to note the loss. Egaeus’ love is stifled, trapped behind closed doors
from beginning to end. When Berenice is forced inside by illness; she
deteriorates, unable to survive in Egaeus’ preferred habitat. As her health
recedes, Egaeus becomes distraught and takes refuge in the once was. He
proposes marriage though he can hardly stand Berenice’s state of diminishment. “Either
the memory of past bliss is the anguish of to-day, or the agonies which are
have their origins in the ecstasies which might have been.” A debilitating fascination
with past-tense perfection bubbles up forcing him to execute monstrous deeds.
In a trancelike state, he moves to possess her last remaining attribute. His
obsession is total.
UN’s devotion does not move beyond the verbal (he is not
consumed as Egaeus). Despite his vow to “[Eleanora] and to Heaven, that I would
never bind myself in marriage to any daughter on Earth,” upon moving to the
city he meets Ermengarde. “What was my passion for the young girl of the valley
in comparison for the forever and the delirium and the spirit lifting ecstasy
of adoration with which poured out of my whole soul in tears at the feet of the
ethereal Ermengarde?” Though he’d sealed his vows with an invocation of
damnation from the Alimighty (should he renege), our man marries Ermengarde all
the same. This new love overpowers any fears of this self-administered curse;
it is just that strong. What fate should befall this impetuous lover? Utter
torment? Ghostly harassment and all matter of punishment from a slithery nether
realms? No, no--freedom is his fate. “Soft sighs in the silence of night,”
bring word of his destiny from on high: “sleep in peace. For the spirit of Love
reigneth and ruleth, and, in taking thy passionate heart her who is Ermengarde,
thou art absolved, for reasons which shall remain known to thee in heaven, of
they vows to Eleanora.” With these stories laid side by side, it would seem acceptance
is to be rewarded while stubborn stagnation is worthy of punishment.
These stories appear to have been concocted in conjunction
with key points in Poe’s own romantic life. Berenice
was written the year Poe was married (1835), Eleanora the year Virginia
fell ill (1842). While it would (most likely) not be accurate to take the
relationships depicted in Berenice
and Eleanora (respectively) as direct
representations of Poe’s own life and marriage, they do offer a window into
Poe’s stance on love. It stands to reason these feelings could easily be
applied to Poe’s own romantic life.
Egaeus worships his cousin’s vitality, so too did Poe
worship Virginia ’s
youthful blush. After consumption hit, Poe wrote in a letter to a friend
(according to Wikipedia): “...each time I felt all the agonies of her death-
and at each accession of the disorder I loved her more deeply and clung to her
life with more deliberate pertinacity.” Just as Egaeus became lost as illness
struck, so too did Poe: “But I am constitutionally sensitive--nervous in a very
unusual degree. I became insane with long intervals of horrible sanity.”
Written seven years before Virginia ’s
own sickness, Berenice seems a bit
portentous in a way, though Poe’s own “insanity” could not contend with the
addled mind of Egaeus. In all his grief, Egaeus took to his pliers while pen
and paper served to channel Poe’s passion. In fact his construction of Eleanora in 1842 reads as a sad but
phenomenally healthy act of meditation, a lesson in letting go. Though UN
devotes himself to the dead in a fit of passion and grief, time and experience
allow him the chance to reconsider. In the end, he chooses life (and
Ermengarde). Poe himself made some efforts in this regard: he had taken up a
few extramarital correspondences of an intimate nature during Virginia ’s illness, supposedly with her
encouragement and blessing according to one such pen pal.
When he passed away in 1849, Poe had been engaged to remarry.
Were she to be his Ermengarde, we may never know. Definitive answers are rarely
available where both death and art are concerned. After passing some time with
these stories, mulling and milling about at easel and keyboard respectively, I feel
as though I’ve struck flesh, bone, and perhaps just a snippet of understanding.
Caricature is rendered corporeal and the pedestal has given way to personhood.
As a maker of things, things to be viewed and consumed beyond my grasp and life
span (possibly)--those feelings of connection and understanding that bubble up
from the artistic ether feel all the more valuable. It gives me hope for my own
creations. To be understood (even just a little) can be magic.
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