Annabel Lee (Poe)

Annabel Lee is a poem by the American poet Edgar Allan Poe , which was first published in the New York Daily Tribune on October 9, 1849 two days after Poe's death as part of an obituary after it was composed in the spring of 1849, the year Poe died . This was followed by numerous reprints in various American newspapers and in November 1849 the publication in the Southern Literary Messenger . The poem has since been republished and anthologized several times.

Origin and meaning

Portrait of Virginia Poe after her death in 1847

It is often believed that Poe makes reference in this poem to the death of his wife, Virginia Clemm Poe, who died in January 1847. Even Sarah Elmira Royster had with Poe as a teenager and after the death of his wife relations, was discussed as a possible inspiration.

Annabel Lee is considered to be a less profound poem, the meaning of which is quickly understood and whose value is therefore more to be found in the form. The painful mourning for the death of the beautiful lover is a recurring motif in various poems by Poe, for example in The Raven or Ulalume . However, while the lyrical narrator in The Raven eventually completely loses any hope of a reunion with his beloved after death in the afterlife ( "nevermore" , dt. "Nevermore") and goes mad, the narrator is Annabel Lee determined by the indissoluble Connection of the souls of both lovers convinced, who are unable to separate neither the angels in heaven nor the demons in the underworld ( “And neither the angels in heaven above, Nor the demons down under the sea, Can ever dissever my soul from the soul Of the beautiful Annabel Lee. " ).

Publication history

text

Annabel Lee : Pure draft of Poe's manuscript 1849

original	translation
It was many and many a year ago, In a kingdom by the sea, That a maiden there lived whom you may know By the name of Annabel Lee; And this maiden she lived with no other thought Than to love and be loved by me.	It was many, many years ago, In a kingdom near the sea, There lived a girl whom you may know by the name of Annabel Lee. And this girl, she lived without any other thought than to love me and to be loved by me.
I was a child and she was a child, In this kingdom by the sea; But we loved with a love that was more than love- I and my Annabel Lee; With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven Coveted her and me.	I was a child and she was a child, In this kingdom near the sea; And we loved one love, even more than one love Me and my Annabel Lee; With a love that the angels desired, theirs and mine.
And this was the reason that, long ago, In this kingdom by the sea, A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling My beautiful Annabel Lee; So that her highborn kinsman came And bore her away from me, To shut her up in a sepulcher In this kingdom by the sea.	And this was the reason, long before, In this kingdom near the sea, A storm blew from the clouds, stole My lovely Annabel Lee; So that her highborn kinsman came and took her away from me, To lock her up in a tomb In this kingdom near the sea.
The angels, not half so happy in heaven, Went envying her and me- Yes! - that was the reason as all men know, In this kingdom by the sea That the wind came out of the cloud by night, Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.	The angels, not half so happy in heaven, envied them and me - yes! - this was the reason, as men know, In this kingdom near the sea. When the wind jumped out of the clouds at night, it cooled and killed my Annabel Lee.
But our love it was stronger by far than the love Of those who were older than we- Of many far wiser than we- And neither the angels in heaven above, Nor the demons down under the sea, Can ever dissever my soul from the soul Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.	But our love was far stronger than the love of the elders, of far wiser than us- And neither the angels up in heaven, nor the demons deep down in the sea, can ever separate my soul and that of the beautiful Annabel Lee.
For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams Of the beautiful Annabel Lee; And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes Of the beautiful Annabel Lee; And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side Of my darling- my darling- my life and my bride, In the sepulcher there by the sea, In her tomb by the sounding sea.	The moon never shines without bringing me dreams of the beautiful Annabel Lee. And the stars never rise, but I feel her eyes The beautiful Annabel Lee. And so, every flooding night, I lie by the side of my darling - my darling - my life and my bride, In the grave there near the sea, In her grave site near the roaring sea.

Annabel Lee in music

Joan Baez sang the poem in 1967 on the album Joan on sheet music by Don Dilworth. Stevie Nicks did the same, her version can be found on the 2011 album In Your Dreams . Alexander Veljanov tried a German version in 2006.

The Psychobilly group Tiger Army referred to Annabel Lee in 2001 in a play of the same name.

The American folk singer Marissa Nadler set Annabel Lee to music on her 2004 album Ballads Of Living And Dying .

In 2010, the band Alesana released a concept album that explored Poe's poem. In the same year the piece Annabel Lee from the rock group Black Rebel Motorcycle Club was released .

The German speed folk band Fiddler's Green released a setting of the piece in their early years. It is very different from the music otherwise produced by this band.

In 2015 the band Lord of the Lost released the song Annabel Lee with the text from the poem on their acoustic album Swan Song .

expenditure

Annabel Lee . In: Thomas Ollive Mabbott (Ed.): The Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe , Volume I: Poems . The Beklnap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA 1969, pp. 468-481.

Secondary literature

Bradford A. Booth: The Identity of Annabel Lee . In: College English 7, 1945, pp. 17-19.
Adam Bradford: Inspiring Death: Poe's Poetic Aesthetics, Annabel Lee, and The Communities of Mourning in Nineteenth-century America . In: Edgar Allan Poe Review 12: 1, 2011, pp. 72-100.
Robert A. Law: A Source of 'Annabel Lee . In: Journal of English and Germanic Philology 21, 1922, pp. 341-346.
Deborah K. Nagy: Annabel Lee: Poe's Ballad . in: RE: AL: The Journal of Liberal Arts 3: 2, 1977, pp. 29-34.
Ma Luz García Parra: Poe: The Concept of Poetry and Poetic Practice with Reference to the Relationship between The Poetic Principle and Annabel Lee . In: Revista Alicantina de Estudios Ingleses 13, 2000, pp. 53-65.
Sławomir Studniarz: Sonority and Semantics in 'Annabel Lee' . In: Edgar Allan Poe Review 16: 1, 2015, pp. 107-125.

Web links

Wikisource: Annabel Lee - Sources and full texts

Publication history on the website of the Edgar Allan Poe Society

swell

↑ See the detailed information and evidence of the Edgar Allan Poe Society in Baltimore on Annabel Lee's history of publications on Edgar Allan Poe - “Annabel Lee” , accessed January 31, 2015. Before his death, Poe had three copies of the manuscript for publication in Circulated. As the documentation of the Edgar Allan Poe Society shows in detail at this point, the poem was printed in eleven different versions after Poe's death between 1849 and 1850. The biggest difference was in the exact wording of the final line, which was published in two versions. In one version it says "in her tomb by the sounding sea" , while the other version reads "in her tomb by the side of the sea" .

↑ ^a ^b Mark Richardson (2004): Who Killed Annabel Lee? Writing about Literature in the Composition Classroom. College English, Vol. 66, No. 3 (Jan. 2004), p. 283: "General sources like literary encyclopedias tend to point to the poem's associations with Poe's own experience of love and the death of his young wife" "most scholars seem to echo the assertion voiced by Floyd Stovall that "the value of the poem subsists more in its form than in its meaning" "

^ Bradford A. Booth (1945): The Identity of Annabel Lee. College English, Vol. 7, No. 1 (Oct. 1945), pp. 17-19

↑ See Julienne H. Empric: A Note on "Annabel Lee" . In: Poe Studies , June 1973, Vol. VI, No. 1, 6: 25-30, online Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore - Poe Studies - Poe Studies - Marginalia . Retrieved January 30, 2015.

↑ FIDDLERS GREEN Annabel Lee Lyrics ( Memento of the original from October 18, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . On: magistrix.de . Retrieved October 17, 2013 @1@ 2

[1] See the detailed information and evidence of the Edgar Allan Poe Society in Baltimore on Annabel Lee's history of publications on Edgar Allan Poe - “Annabel Lee” , accessed January 31, 2015. Before his death, Poe had three copies of the manuscript for publication in Circulated. As the documentation of the Edgar Allan Poe Society shows in detail at this point, the poem was printed in eleven different versions after Poe's death between 1849 and 1850. The biggest difference was in the exact wording of the final line, which was published in two versions. In one version it says "in her tomb by the sounding sea" , while the other version reads "in her tomb by the side of the sea" .

[MR-2] Mark Richardson (2004): Who Killed Annabel Lee? Writing about Literature in the Composition Classroom. College English, Vol. 66, No. 3 (Jan. 2004), p. 283: "General sources like literary encyclopedias tend to point to the poem's associations with Poe's own experience of love and the death of his young wife" "most scholars seem to echo the assertion voiced by Floyd Stovall that "the value of the poem subsists more in its form than in its meaning" "

[3] Bradford A. Booth (1945): The Identity of Annabel Lee. College English, Vol. 7, No. 1 (Oct. 1945), pp. 17-19

[4] See Julienne H. Empric: A Note on "Annabel Lee" . In: Poe Studies , June 1973, Vol. VI, No. 1, 6: 25-30, online Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore - Poe Studies - Poe Studies - Marginalia . Retrieved January 30, 2015.


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