Thursday, November 15, 2018

THE POWER OF WORDS (1845)

Poe never seems to have lost interest in the idea of angelic colloquies, but "Power of Words" is definitely better organized than earlier works like "Eiros and Charmian" and "Monos and Una."

Once again, we have two angels, at least one of whom used to be a human from a now destroyed Earth. The other angel is more "in the know" about the nature of the universe, and relates a somewhat Deist-sounding diatribe about how the angels, acting for the Creator, brought the universe into being through "impulse upon the ether." Poe's descriptions of the angels winging their way through constellations like Orion are impressive despite their brevity, and though Poe was never a philosopher, his attempt to imagine God as an ever-evolving intelligence is a pleasing blasphemy for the time. And for once, the colloquy actually has a climax, as the know-it-all angel comes near a star he personally brought into being, and sees in it the twin sides of his own nature, of both the love of beauty and the horror of psychic turmoil:

"[The star's] brilliant flowers are the dearest o all unfulfilled dreams, and its surging volcanoes are the passions of the most turbulent and unhallowed of hearts."


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