Edgar Allan Poe’s obsession with the morbid and the death of beautiful
women not only serves as the embodiment of the sources of melancholy, but
also functions as the embodiment of the beautiful. Readings of Poe’s terror
tales commonly emphasize the beauty that is beyond the realms of ordinary
life and even human perception. These readings constitute what I call aesthetic
readings of Poe’s works. This paper attempts to develop an alternative reading
of Poe, which involves the ethical aspect of disease and the notion of life. I
argue that many of Poe’s readers, however impressive their readings may be,
understand “disease” in a negative way and hence might overlook the insights
within Poe’s tales. While aesthetic readings celebrate Poe’s dark, destructive,
morbid, and even nihilist style, an ethical reading of Poe intends to illustrate
that disease can “liberate” an individual through the “transmutation of values”
and leads to the affirmation of life. Life, in this sense, refers not to a particular
individual life, but to that which is never completely specified and always
indefinite. The tale “Morella” depicts a return to life—but that which returns
is difference instead of identity, and that which returns brings a new mode of
living. This new mode of living requires people to know life as such
differently, to know what is in oneself as more-than-individual, to actively
engage with vitality, and to eventually realize that life is impersonal and
indefinite
Relation:
Concentric: Literary and Cultural studies 44(1), p.41-60
